Job Details: Salary range: £41,580 - £47,628 per annum. Salary negotiable depending upon experience Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, Westminster, SW1E 6QP Hours per week: 36 Contract type: Permanent Closing date: 13 July 2025 About Us: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF MARKS’ PASSION FOR FAIR HOUSING AND SAFE HOMES Private sector housing enforcement is more than just a job —it’s about making a real impact on people’s lives. Our dedicated professionals work tirelessly to ensure tenants have safe, secure, and well-maintained homes. Take Mark, one of our Principal Officers and a true expert in tackling poor housing conditions across the city. Mark’s journey started as a trainee, driven by a passion for improving housing standards. With the council’s support, he gained professional qualifications and took on increasingly complex enforcement cases, becoming a leader in his field. Today, we depend on Mark’s investigative skills to identify and address unsafe housing, from damp and mould to fire safety hazards in high-rise blocks. He ensures landlords meet legal requirements and that tenants live in homes that are safe, secure, and fit for purpose. But enforcement isn’t just about regulations — it’s about people. When Mark encountered a tenant struggling with severe hoarding and vermin, he didn’t just issue a notice. He took a multi-agency approach, working with support services to help the tenant regain control of their living conditions. His work goes beyond individual cases — he plays a key role in shaping the council’s long-term enforcement strategy, targeting rogue landlords, and driving up housing standards across the city. If you’re passionate about fair housing and want to make a real difference, join our team and be part of the extraordinary work we do. The Role: As a Senior Environment Health Officer (EHO), you too can make a powerful contribution. You will have the unique and rewarding opportunity to work closely with the Principal Officers to lead efforts in improving housing conditions across one of the most high-profile, dynamic boroughs, Westminster. Our aim is to ensure that every resident, business, and visitor of Westminster will thrive in a clean, safe, and quiet city. Public Protection and Licensing is a service that enhances the lives of our residents and businesses. It sits at the heart of our vision to deliver a Fairer Westminster. As a Senior EHO, you will support the development of apprentice Environmental Health Officers and Regulatory Compliance Officers. Alongside the Principal Officer, you will develop and deliver staff training, ensuring quality monitoring systems for operational-based teams. With a view to improving processes and services, you will undertake project work, leading on the delivery of complex or high-profile pieces. Using your knowledge of environmental health in private sector housing, you will identify risk, support the resolution of issues, and help others to develop their knowledge and expertise. A key part of your role will be ensuring that the private housing sector meets high standards, property licencing is enforced, and rogue landlords are tackled. To this, you’ll need to engage with landlords and tenants to ensure compliance, requiring a mix of diplomacy and firm enforcement. You will be proactive in identifying and educating on areas of risk, helping the public to meet regulatory requirements. When complaints arise, you will deliver a sensitive, fair and informed response in a timely manner. You will carry out routine or unannounced visits and inspections to ensure compliance with legislation. When necessary, you’ll take enforcement action, initiate court proceedings, prepare and give evidence in court. This will require gathering the right intelligence and having well-kept records. To ensure housing compliance and the effectiveness of enforcement actions, you will work with internal teams, legal professionals, landlords, tenants, and external agencies like the police and fire service. You will often have to balance differing perspectives, expectations and priorities. Additionally, using your specialist technical skills and knowledge, you will be a champion for developing, implementing and enforcing environmental health policies and legislation. All with a view to maintaining and improving safeguard standards relating to people's health and well-being. You will be proactive about ensuring that your expertise in environmental health is up to date through ongoing training. As part of the team at Westminster City Council, you be surrounded by passionate, knowledgeable colleagues, all dedicated to improving living conditions. This is a tremendous place to develop your career, as inclusivity, innovation and professional growth are truly valued. Please refer to the Job Description for more information. About You: The ideal candidate has comprehensive post qualification experience and understanding of working within private sector housing. You are comfortable responding to complex, high-profile and political complaints from the public, stakeholders and public elected members, both in writing and in person. Plus, you’re adept at case management, including gathering information and evidence to support legal action. You understand rules of evidence and court proceedings. Your experience at delivering a customer-facing role has developed your interpersonal skills. You are skilled at building trusted relationships quickly, demonstrating calm, and deescalating conflict, when need be. This will be matched by an aptitude for understanding and explaining legalisation, its requirements and procedures, to others. You can listen to other points of view but know when to influence behaviour through sharing knowledge and outlining consequences. We would like you to have the ability to make quick-time decisions on how to achieve compliance and reduce risk to the public. You are confident making decisions and assessing risk out in the community with minimal supervision. You are enthused by the opportunity to mentor new officers and offer support towards their professional development. As well as this, you can confidently manage your own workload. Furthermore, you have good IT skills, proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite. You are willing to use handheld technology to record information, undertake tasks and respond to customers whilst working in the city. You have a degree or diploma in Environmental Health or relevant other qualifications. We are interested in other qualifications or experience that would allow the post holder to undertake the role. For more information and to apply please see our dedicated recruitment site Apply - Westminster City Council Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role. We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning subject to the volume of suitable applicants. What We Offer: Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe. At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working. The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.