A fantastic and rare opportunity to join a well-established and energetic property company, based in Manchester City Centre. Hurstwood Holdings is a long-established property investment and development group currently with over £300m of commercial and residential property on 150 sites nationwide housing over 1000 occupier clients, and our priority is both the letting of our vacant space and retention of existing occupiers. We have a proactive and highly experienced team of property professionals who make it their business to understand the property market inside-out.
We are now looking to recruit a Utility Manager to join our busy head office team. This is a full time position, which requires an enthusiastic, hard-working individual to assist with the management of our utility contracts as well as the administration side of our business rate liabilities, with a strong focus on working closely with the estates and accounts teams.
The role would involve:
Utilities
- Receiving utilities and rates bills via post, email or portal and preparing them for checking and scanning.
- Lead and coordinate all aspects of the Change of Tenancy (COT) process, ensuring smooth transitions for incoming and outgoing tenants.
- Act as the primary liaison between the commercial, sales, and operations departments to ensure a coordinated approach to COT processes. Facilitate regular meetings and communication channels to discuss COT activities, issues, and improvements
- Continually assess and enhance COT processes and systems for greater efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction. Implement best practices and innovative solutions to improve the COT experience.
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date records of all COT activities. Generate reports for senior management, highlighting key metrics, trends, and areas for improvement.
Business Rates
- Downloading the bills that are available on the council or provider portals.
- Responsible for checking the liability of our bills to determine who occupies the space and is responsible to pay.
- Providing the correct general ledger coding for our accounts payable team to process the bills.
- Understanding the specifics of the rates processes including the mitigation scheme rates relief and rateable value.
- Engage directly with multiple Council contacts to resolve queries ensuring the bills we receive are accurate for processing or disputed and resolved.
- Checking our Rates Bacs Payment runs prior to release.
- Promptly dealing with any rates refunds that are received to ensure our finance teams can clear outstanding amounts.
- You will ensure that we are continually pursuing credits back from local authorities and ensure that we keep meticulous records to facilitate such claims.
- Prompt resolution of any rates final demands to ensure these are resolved.
- Consistently looking for ways to drive improvements in our rates processes.
- Work closely with our Accounts Payable team on urgent items that require prompt resolution under pressure i.e. (Bailiff demands).
The ideal candidate for the role will possess the following experience and traits;
- Friendly and enthusiastic
- Reliable and very well organised
- Excellent telephone manner
- A proactive self-starter
- Ideally 2 years experience working in a similar role for a property company
- Excellent communication skills to build relationships with suppliers
- Previous experience with Xero (or similar accounting software)
- Strong IT and Microsoft Excel skills
Hurstwood Holdings consists of a friendly and family-orientated team, who work well together based at our Head Office in Manchester City Centre. We are a social team and benefits of working at Hurstwood include;
- Remuneration of circa £28,000+ p.a. (depending on experience)
- Well located city centre office
- Flexible start and finish times
- Relatively flat structure so all team interact with CEO and Managing Director
- Employee discounts and benefits scheme
- Independent employee mental health support
- Team social activities and drinks, with company paid lunches once a month
All applications complete with a cover letter to:
Aimee Beaumont – Operations Director
Aimee.beaumont@hurstwoodholdings.com
