Croeso

Kayleigh, Revenues Assistant
Hartlepool Borough Council

Before I worked for the council, I did some casual work for an event organised by the council. When I first started my apprenticeship, I was based at the Education Development Centre providing support to school co-ordinators and providing reception duties. During the second year of my apprenticeship I was based with the central administration team in Children's Services. I applied for my current job towards the end of my second year, because my apprenticeship was coming to an end and it was a good opportunity.

In my role as revenues assistant I am involved in a wide range of work including: making payment arrangements over the telephone; dealing with calls regarding reminders, final notices, summonses and liability orders; taking relevant recovery action on accounts, sending them to the bailiff and issuing attachment of earnings/benefit orders; monitoring bailiff arrangements; raising purchase orders and approving invoices; minuting meetings; setting up direct debits; providing court support; tracing people; and answering general queries on council tax and business rates.

To do the job I needed NVQ level three in business and administration, five GCSEs at grades A - C and RSA qualifications. I also needed relevant experience of working in a similar environment, good team working skills, good telephone manner, experience of using Microsoft packages, ability to plan and manage workload and an ability to deal with variety of service users in an appropriate manner.

It's difficult dealing with irate service users, but I like the variety of different queries from service users and also enjoy helping people come to arrangements on their accounts.

In future, I hope to progress up the career ladder and gain more knowledge and responsibility. I would like to become a team leader or manager.