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Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
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About the job
Job summary
DLUHC Finance is an exciting and varied place to work. We work closely with policy teams to develop government policy on issues ranging from the governments Levelling Up agenda, building more homes across the country, and tackling homelessness and rough sleeping.
We are friendly teams with a focus on development, supportive line management, and wellbeing. Successful candidates will have access to extensive professional development resources as part of the Government Finance Community, including support for career development. We are constantly seeking to improve how we work and welcome new ideas to shape this. We are looking forward to hiring people with a range of backgrounds and perspectives to bring new expertise and fresh thinking to our teams.
Senior Finance Business Partner
Our focus is ensuring we make best use of taxpayers money to deliver for the public. The two Finance Business Partner teams are at the forefront of this. We work with policy and delivery teams to ensure policies are value for money and deliverable, and help teams understand how well they are achieving their policy goals. As part of this, we work closely with policy colleagues and other teams in Finance, translating data and offering financial advice to provide insight behind the numbers.
The Finance and Performance: Corporate, Communities and Local Government team leads on supporting delivery of the Levelling Up agenda and to revive the fortunes of overlooked parts of the country, our work with local government on humanitarian resettlement, integration and emergencies and wider local government policy. These are exciting roles, working directly with senior stakeholders as their trusted financial advisor challenging on policy issues at the heart of the Governments agenda.
The Finance and Performance: Housing division leads on supporting delivery across a range of high-profile multi-billion programmes covering housing supply, regeneration, social housing and building safety. As part of this team, you will be engaging with senior leaders across the department in shaping how the departments strategic objectives are delivered, and Homes England, DLUHCs largest Arms Length Body, in overseeing and scrutinising performance against delivery metrics.
Budget Control Team Leader
Budget Control sits within the Strategic Finance Division. We are a friendly team at the heart of the DLUHC Finance Directorate, responsible for overseeing negotiations with HM Treasury and setting the departments in-year financial strategy.
The Budget Control team plays a pivotal role in managing the departments in-year financial position, making sure the departmental resources are allocated efficiently and maximise delivery against priority outcomes. We also lead the departments annual Supply Estimates processes that deliver the resource and capital funding the department needs to meet its objectives.
This is a high-profile role and stretching role that offers a real development opportunity within a friendly, supportive team. Your blend of technical knowledge and excellent softer skills to build effective relationships with Finance Business Partners and HM Treasury will be invaluable.
Job description
Senior Finance Business Partners (x3)
We are looking for up to 3 x G7 Senior Finance Business Partners to support Local Growth, Local Government, Resilience and Communities (LGR&C), and Housing. These are stretching roles in a fast-paced environment, with scope for candidates to lead engagement with senior officials across the department. We are looking for someone with experience of helping guide a business through finance and governance processes with the aim of improving decision making and delivering value for money for the taxpayer. The essence of these roles is to partner closely with policy and the corporate teams, and to be successful you will demonstrate your ability to build enduring relationships from a solid foundation of trust and empathy. This will be central to delivering constructive challenge in a way which is effective. Your stakeholder engagement skills will be built on diplomacy, problem-solving and a can-do approach.
Working to a G6 Head of Finance, you will lead a small team that provides finance business partnering support to directorates within the Local Growth, LGR&C and Housing groups. Your responsibilities will include:
Developing a firm understanding of your policy directorate within Local Growth, LGR&C or Housing groups to ensure finance and delivery insight can be provided to senior staff. This includes identifying underlying cost drivers, enablers and blockers of successful delivery, to inform decisions on spend;
Building strong and trusting relationships with senior policy customers – providing expert business partnering support for policy areas both current and in-development ensuring taxpayers money is spent well;
Overseeing, scrutinising and challenging budgets and forecasts within Local Growth, LGR&C or Housing, ensuring that we are effectively linking our financial performance to the delivery of the Departments objectives- using excellent relationships with Directors and Deputy Directors to do this;
Reviewing and assessing business cases, bringing in wider experts including analytical, legal and commercial teams to ensure alignment with Green Book standards, Managing Public Money and other government guidance – offering advice, challenge and solutions where necessary;
Support the Local Growth, LGR&C or Housing policy teams to develop robust spending proposals for Budgets and Spending Reviews;
Providing advice for our Accounting Officer (the Permanent Secretary, who is accountable for ensuring the regularity, propriety, feasibility, and value for money of departmental spending) on whether the rules of Managing Public Money are being met in policy development;
Line management of at least one team member, overseeing their work and supporting their development. You will be a thoughtful, inclusive and supporting line manager who can build a high-performing and happy team;
Playing a corporate role in Finance through one of our corporate workstreams, such as Diversity and Inclusion.
For one of the roles, overseeing and scrutinising the finances of Homes England, the largest Arms Length Body in the Departmental Group.
Budget Control Team Leader (x1)
You will work closely with finance colleagues to bring together the in-year financial position. You will provide financial analysis, strategic direction and challenge to ensures forecasts and budget asks are taut and realistic.
This is a high-profile role, and you will need to be confident and credible working closely with senior officials, both within the Department and HM Treasury; strong communication skills and the ability to build trust are critical. The work is fast-paced and you will need to demonstrate strong project management skills and develop processes to manage a large number of stakeholders. Resilience under pressure and flexibility are also key. You will need to be an experienced finance professional, ideally with a good working knowledge of budget/financial control and/or business partnering.
The successful candidate will be responsible for:
Assembling and interrogating the monthly financial forecasts to ensure forecasts are as accurate and complete as possible.
Analysing the cumulative impact of forecast variances across the departmental group.
Monthly reporting to the DLUHC Executive Team and Ministerial Board, setting out the overall financial position and highlighting areas requiring decisions and choices.
Overseeing monthly forecasting returns to HM Treasury and ensuring HM Treasury colleagues understand the departments monthly position.
Helping to deliver the departments Main and Supplementary Estimate that is voted on in Parliament.
Working closely with the Financial Strategy team to develop our financial strategy; and using your technical knowledge to identify opportunities to utilise flexibilities in our budgets or underspends for re-prioritisation.
Leading or supporting on ad hoc commissions, ensuring that Finance Business Partners are well-prepared and supported.
Line management of two Financial Analysts in the Budget Control team.
Person specification
Essential
– Be able to establish trusting relationships with a range of senior stakeholders with competing objectives, being able to effectively influence them using professionalism and credibility.
– Be a skilled critical thinker with strong numerical abilities, capable of applying the Managing Public Money framework (value for money, feasibility, propriety, and regularity) to new ideas to shape policy decisions.
– Be a strong communicator, adept and experienced at extracting insights from data and financial analysis and explaining complex concepts in a clear and understandable manner for non-experts to drive effective decision making
– Be capable of responding at pace on a range of competing priorities, whilst remaining calm under pressure and demonstrating resilience.
– Be able to identify opportunities and spot potential improvements to systems and processes, with the determination to drive through change.
– Be a qualified accountant or have a demonstrable willingness to qualify, ideally through actively studying for an accountancy qualification (an accountancy allowance is available to successful CCAB qualified candidates: CIMA, CIPFA, ACCA, ICAEW, ICAS, ICAI).
Desirable
– Experience of coordinating and feeding into Fiscal Events, medium-term Strategic Plans, and/or business planning activities.
– A good working knowledge of the Consolidated Budgeting Guidance and Managing Public Money capability to apply these frameworks is essential, but prior experience is not.
– Budget Control Team Leader only: Experience of working in a Government budgeting role, including the Main/Supplementary Estimates process.
– Finance Business Partner roles only: Knowledge of working with, and managing the finances of, complex Arms Length Bodies and/or subsidiaries.
Please note near miss candidates may be offered roles at a lower grade. If this is the case, candidates will be informed as part of the formal notification of the panels decision.
Benefits
£13,418 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.
Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
Things you need to know
Selection process details
We are for everyone
At DLUHC we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce. We promote equality of opportunity in all aspects of employment and a working environment free from discrimination, harassment, bullying and victimisation.
We would strongly recommend that applicants get in touch with the vacancy manager to find out more information about this role.
CV and Cover Letter Declaration
We recruit based on your knowledge and skills, and not background, gender or ethnicity – this is called name blind recruitment.
Please remove references to your:
- name/title
- educational institutions
- age
- gender
- email address
- postal address
- phone number
- nationality/immigration status
You will need to merge your CV and covering letter into one document. When submitting your application Applied will ask you to upload a CV, when doing this you should upload your merged document of your CV and covering letter.
Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that your application would be viewed by different assessors.
At sift, through your CV and covering letter we will be assessing:
Experience
Technical Ability
Your covering letter should be no more than 2 page referencing how you meet the criteria set out in the job description, describing how you meet the criteria we have described under Person Specification, including your experience and skills relevant to the kind of work you could be doing.
The interview will be of a blended nature consisting of behaviour and strength based questions as listed in the advert. The strength based questions will require natural responses from the candidates. Candidates invited to interview will also be asked to complete a presentation.
In full the campaign will test the below Success Profile Elements:
Experience: Yes – Experience questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description
Technical: Yes Technical questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description.
Strength: Yes
Behaviours: Yes – Seeing the big picture, Leadership, Communicating and Influencing, Delivering at Pace
We do not consider direct CV applications you must apply for this role via the application link on Civil Service Jobs:
Grade 7 salary
- The salary for this role is £49,697 (National).
- For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable.
- If you are a fully-qualified chartered accountant, and you are in an eligible post as determined by the Finance Head of Profession, you may be eligible for an accountancy allowance of £4,000 per annum
Please note that the average employer pension contribution is based upon the National minimum salary for this role. Should your agreed starting salary for this role be different, the average employer pension contribution will be calculated accordingly. If you are a Secondee, this will not apply as you will remain on your home organisations terms and conditions.
Benefits
Transfers across the Civil Service on or after 4 October 2018:
Any move to DLUHC from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk.
For further information about the benefits available to DLUHC employees, please see the attached Candidate Pack.
Location
- Birmingham
- Cardiff
- Edinburgh
- Warrington
- Wolverhampton
- Darlington*
There may be opportunities for candidates to work flexibly depending on the business needs. This will be discussed with the vacancy manager on a case-by-case basis if you are successful for the role.
*Please note: The Darlington Economic Campus is a pioneering new cross-government hub which will bring together people across departments and public organisations to play an active role in the most important economic issues of the day. The work of the Campus will make a real difference to people both across the UK and internationally. There will be substantial career opportunities and exciting prospects – a career at the Campus means you will be working at the heart of Government, with access to the benefits and fantastic opportunities offered by the civil service. This role is based at DLUHC and we will be joined on the campus by:
- HM Treasury
- Department for International Trade
- Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
- Office for National Statistics
- Department for Education
For further information on the DEC, please take a look at the attached DEC candidate pack.
SIFT AND INTERVIEW DATES:
Sifting is envisaged to take place W/C 02/10/22 with interview dates to be confirmed. All interviews are currently being held remotely via videocall.
Reserve List
In the event that we identify more appointable candidates than we currently have posts available, we will hold applicant details on a reserve list for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. This may include roles at a lower grade. Candidates placed on a reserve list will be informed of this. Those candidates who do not wish to remain on the reserve list should contact recruitment@levellingup.gov.uk to be removed from the reserve list.
Candidate Pack Information
Please see attached Candidate pack for further information.
Before starting your application its very important to make sure that you are eligible to apply and meet the Civil Service nationality requirements. All candidates are expected to read the information provided in the DLUHC candidate pack regarding nationality requirements and rules
Internal Fraud Database
The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned. The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to DLUHC as a participating government organisations. DLUHC then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented.
For more information please see- Internal Fraud Register
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Nationality requirements
Working for the Civil Service
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission’s recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
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Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Hannah Bangs
- Email : Hannah.Bangs@levellingup.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : recruitment@communities.gov.uk
