About the roles
We are recruiting to four roles across our Corporate Finance teams that will provide both support to frontline managers in delivering key services and strengthen the technical expertise within the financial planning team
We are looking for ambitious qualified CCAB/CIMA qualified accountants, ideally with experience of working in a large public sector organisation.
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You will have excellent analytical skills and be comfortable with interpreting and presenting complex information to finance and non-finance professionals. An excellent communicator you will be adept at building relationships with your immediate colleagues as well as service managers. You will be driven by excellence, continuous improvement and a customer focus.
Finance Business Partner:
Social Care, Education & Schools Finance Team
This is an exciting and challenging time for the Social Care service at Hillingdon, which has been continuously reshaping and transforming itself to drive improvement whilst ensuring value for money is achieved. The Ofsted inspection in 2018 noted the “outstanding leadership in the service and the finance team prides itself and having built long lasting and effective working relationships with the Directorate at the same time acting as a critical friend.
This role provides professional financial support to Directors and Senior Managers across a diverse range of services including; Special Educational Needs Transport, Children Centres, Early Years Centres, Children's Homes and Adult Social Care Homes.
The successful candidate will be comfortable working closely with senior management to drive the service forward and ideally have some previous exposure to this service grouping. This is an exciting role that will afford the successful applicant with a genuine opportunity to provide value-adding business partnering and involvement in major transformation projects across a diverse, interesting and rewarding service area.
Finance Business Partner:
Financial Planning (Systems)
This is one of three similar roles within the Financial Planning Team, which work collaboratively across all aspects of the Council's Medium Term Financial Forecast and broader budget management activities - providing the capacity to deliver the annual budget setting process, monthly budget monitoring, corporate finance comments and driving improvement of the Council's financial systems. Given the nature of this work, the post holder will be working closely with the Corporate Director of Finance and other senior officers across the organisation.
The immediate focus of this role will be on the continuous improvement of the Council's budget management system to realise the benefits of upgrading the product. Since its introduction in 2016, Hillingdon has made significant progress in fostering service manager engagement in financial management, enabling further progression of the business partnering model for finance and streamlining business processes through a best-in-class implementation of the budget management system.
We are looking to recruit a candidate with a strong understanding of financial management in the public sector and an ability to critically challenge established business practices with a view to driving improvement. This role has provided a solid grounding in terms of career development for previous postholders that have progressed into more senior roles, both within Hillingdon and in other organisations.
Finance Business Partner:
Capital & HRA
This role provides business partnering support to the Council’s capital programme across the General Fund and the Housing Revenue Account (HRA). Hillingdon has an ambitious and dynamic five year capital programme including significant Housing and Leisure developments, Public realm improvements and ICT Infrastructure modernisation across both the General Fund and the HRA.
This role works closely with project managers to support the capital budget monitoring process and will take responsibility for ensuring that decision makers are presented with high quality financial advice and options where appropriate at key points in the project cycle. This will include undertaking detailed financial options appraisals and supporting project managers to produce robust business cases and to lead in scenario and sensitivity analysis on a project and programme level to ensure risks are understood and managed.
The successful candidate will need to be confident in undertaking investment appraisals and have a good understanding of capital financing and local authority accounting. They will be comfortable working in multi-disciplinary project teams and have the ability to influence key stakeholders at all levels.
Principal Capital Accountant
This role will provide a key link between the management accounting and financial accounting requirements which support the Council's financial management processes and ensure that implications of investment decisions are understood and captured in the Council's Medium Term Financial Forecast (MTFF).
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Alongside playing a key role in the production of statutory financial accounts, areas of work will include responsibility for the finance fixed asset register, property valuation process, leading on production of capital accounts, being the primary audit contact for capital, budget management responsibility for Treasury investments and borrowing for the Council and accounting for VAT.
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This role’s immediate priority will be on ensuring that the interactions between capital investment and revenue budgets are clearly documented and communicated to the organisation, while maintaining an overview of capital programme expenditure and financing, ensuring that the Council prioritises external funding ahead of the Council’s own resources.
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The postholder will be required to work across the finance directorate providing high quality financial advice to both operational finance teams and service directorates to ensure technical compliance with accounting regulations and enable delivery of robust financial management. The successful candidate should be astute at translating complex financial data to non- financial stakeholders and challenge financial decisions and financing options, as well as liaise with external partners in understanding technical transactions and decisions.