Birstol City Council are looking for a Permanent Finance Manager.

• £53,807 - £56,089 per year.
• Will consider Full time, Part time and Term Time only.

The Divisional Financial Management teams are currently looking for Finance Managers to join:

Children and Education

Finance Manager for Education, Inclusion and Skills: this role is focused on supporting the provision of education services, schools, and associated transformation and capital projects.

Finance Manager for Childrens Social Care: where this role is focused on supporting Placements, Fostering, Asylum Teams and associated transformation and capital projects.

All roles will manage a team of Group Accountants and support the Business Partner with Executive Meetings and with other committee and member support responsibilities.

Corporate Finance

The Corporate Finance team is where you will provide technical financial advice, largely around revenue accounting issues.

We monitor a range of technical corporate accounts including suspense, holding and control accounts, close the annual accounts and manage external audit. We also support technical aspects of finance systems work.

Besides being part of the technical finance team, a part of this role includes responsibility for risk and insurance. Therefore knowledge of the insurance industry and its procurement along with an understand of risk frameworks is beneficial but not essential.

About the roles

You will be the trusted advisor to senior members of the council on financial matters. That includes setting annual budgets as well as ensuring short, medium, and long-term forecasts are robust.

You will identify, analyse and report on the financial implications of new initiatives in your area of responsibility.

At year end you will support the preparation of annual statements.

To be successful in these roles you will need to build strong relationships with key stakeholders in your area and across the Council. That will allow you to challenge and advise. A commitment to continual improvement is key and you will need to consistently offer ideas to improve current practice and find efficiencies. There will be opportunities to work on cross-cutting projects that address issues across the council.

Finally, you will need to manage and motivate your team to deliver.

Objectives

• Be personally responsible for taking all necessary steps to fully understand the business needs of the client service areas allocated to you and a general awareness for the whole Directorate, such that you can provide expert assistance to management in achieving value for money and service improvement.
• Provision of monthly reporting, analysis and insight on the performance of each budget. Reporting to include insight on what is driving performance, what actions can be taken to remediate any performance gaps and what actions can be taken to improve performance.
• Research and maintain awareness of alternative models of service delivery and, in conjunction with budget managers, consider how innovative solutions to service delivery can be implemented within the council and/or with partners.
• Identify and participate in improvement and efficiency projects. To facilitate the preparation and delivery of efficiency and savings plans for clients which support corporate long term financial planning including the modelling of costs for various options.
• Support the ring-fenced accounts as required for your remit, including annual update of the 30-year HRA Business Plan and associated model and involvement and update of the financial information for the DSG.
• Build excellent professional relationships with key senior stakeholders across the council, external partners and government departments as appropriate. Representing the council at appropriate external forums & maintain relationships to ensure that proposed initiatives are financially viable and delivered as effectively as possible.
• Interpret financial performance for council wide services or activities and provide options to managers to assist them achieve required efficiencies and spend to budget position on an on-going basis.
• Provide independent analysis & interpretation of complex financial data, to facilitate support & challenge to both internal and external stakeholders and allow decisions to be made following consideration of financial resource and risks implications.