Director of Finance, Business Planning and Governance

The Director of Finance, Business Planning and Governance is a substantial and challenging senior leadership role, reporting to the agency’s CFPO. He/she will be a key member of the agency’s Investment Committee and confident at operating at Board level. 

He/she will be directly accountable for:

• Leading and managing financial, business planning, governance and risk activities across the VOA;
• Securing the resources required by the agency to meet its commitments through discussion with clients including DCLG, DWP, HMRC and Welsh Government;
• Building strong influential relationships with internal and external stakeholders, senior leaders in HMRC, HMT, and client departments.
• Leading and managing the Spending Review process;
• Leading and delivering the medium-term financial strategy;
• Effective and efficient delivery of financial transactional services;

The role is also responsible for:

• Improving the maturity and analysis of investment decisions within the agency;
• Delivery of a set of unqualified, externally published, agency Financial Accounts;
• Managing effective corporate governance and assurance procedures;
• Delivering robust agency performance information and improving the reporting process;
• Developing and embedding the VOA’s Risk Management Strategy;
• Building financial and risk capability across the VOA;
• In-year management accounting and improving the quality of forecasts, ensuring the agency lives within its means and drives value for money;
• Leading the annual business planning and budget allocation process;
• Effective deployment of resources to deliver directorate objectives;
• Leading a team of c30 FTEs and a budget of c £2m.
• Overseeing VOA security strategy and policy and ensuring robust business continuity.

Essential Requirements

• A confident and credible relationship builder, able to inspire trust and confidence, and build constructive relationships at a senior level with other senior colleagues in the agency, finance colleagues in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and other government departments
• Ability to identify and use best financial practice to improve business performance
• Strong track record as a senior manager in leading a financial management function in a large or complex organisation;
• A visible and inclusive leader, who can be a credible trusted advisor and inspire and motivate at team and organisation and partner level, with an emphasis on embedding culture change and a continuous improvement mindset;
• CCAB approved accountancy qualification

Desirable Requirements

• Ability to lead and manage a professional finance and business planning function, and to build financial capability in teams;
• Well-developed professional skills including strategic planning, production of financial accounts, understanding of the annual business planning, forecasting and allocation processes, risk management, and corporate governance and assurance.
• Experience of supporting the delivery to complex transformation and / or digital change programmes

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career within the VOA and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

Equality , Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service values and supports all its employees. For example, we have strong and pro-active staff networks, reasonable adjustments put in place for those who need them, and diversity talent programmes to help everyone irrespective of background, to achieve their potential.

Work life balance

At the VOA we believe in working flexibly to enable our staff to achieve a great work life balance. This is reflected in our flexible working, hybrid working and family friendly policies.

Holiday allowances start at 25 days with an additional 9 bank holidays and 1 privilege day. Your entitlement will increase up to 30 days once you have 5 years’ service which equates to 6 weeks leave per year (pro-rata for part-time working).

We offer generous paid maternity and paternity leave above statutory requirements, with up to 4 weeks paid paternity leave (double the statutory requirement).

We are also investing heavily in our premises with flagship offices opening recently in Leeds, London and Manchester.

Pay pension and other financial benefits:

All new joiners are automatically enrolled into the Civil Service Pension Scheme; a competitive contributory pension where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension. This is an average salary scheme, and the VOA contributes between 26.6% and 30.3% based on your earnings. Our People’s contributions are between 4.6% and 8.05% (2023/24 rates) and benefit from tax relief. For comparison, according to the Pensions Regulator, the minimum total employer and employee contribution are only 8%, of which just 3% has to come from the employer. The Civil Service Pension Scheme is a huge benefit for our people and sets us apart from private sector organisations.

Our great reward system ensures our people are recognised for their hard work via a high street and online retailor voucher scheme. Our people also have access to great discounts on key shops/services. Long service awards are presented for career milestones. In addition, there is a season ticket loan scheme, a cycle to work scheme (worth up to £4000) and vouchers for eye care.

Our people also have access to our employee assistance programme, which provides a range of wellbeing support services including free counselling.

Learning and Development:

We invest in helping our people to be the very best they can be. This means you can expect comprehensive, ongoing training, a tailored development plan, and support to keep progressing. And as part of the Civil Service, you’ll have opportunities to progress, and explore new areas, both in the agency and beyond.

We’ll support your learning and development with:

• A structured induction and Individual Learning Plan.
• Mentoring and shadowing opportunities.
• Access to a wide variety of cross government networks.

There are many more Benefits to working for the VOA. For full  details of what could be available to you as a VOA employee  Download our Benefits Booklet.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : VOARecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk