Head of Finance for Regeneration, Housing and Planning
About The Job
Job summary
DLUHC Finance is an exciting and varied place to work. We work closely with policy teams to develop flagship policies ranging from the Brownfield Infrastructure and Land Fund which is aimed at making brownfield land fit for housing development and the Affordable Homes Programme which is delivering affordable homes and new homes specifically for social rent. Recent fiscal events have provided the department with significant funding and delivery responsibility, for example in the areas of planning reform and urban regeneration as part of a long-term plan for housing.
Our focus is ensuring we make best use of its resources to deliver our priorities. The Finance and Performance - Housing team is at the forefront of this. We are a friendly team with a focus on development and wellbeing.
We are seeking to fill the role of G6 Head of Finance for the Regeneration, Housing and Planning Group. This is a stretching role, with scope for the candidate to lead engagement at DG level, senior colleagues at other departments and Ministers. You will lead a team working closely with policy colleagues and other teams in Finance translating data and providing financial advice and strategic insight with a focus on finding solutions.
Job Description
You will lead a team of eight that provides finance business partnering support to specific directorates. You will also lead a wider virtual team responsible for providing support to the DG on group-wide issues.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Being a key contributor to policy development of our largest or Novel & Contentious programmes e.g. those that need internal Investment Sub Committee and HMT approval. Stay on top of the biggest issues that need resolving, offering advice and support to policy colleagues whilst providing autonomy to G7-sub teams to lead on routine issues. Identify accounting officer risks and support the development of AO advice as necessary.
- Ensure that the team provides value-adding quality technical advice on in the development of new policy. Liaise closely with the DLUHC Financial Accounting and Reporting Team and HMT Spending Teams to ensure plans are consistent with Managing Public Money. This role includes oversight of some of the Department’s most complex funds for Housing, including Financial Transactions (loans) and Guarantees.
- Provide a first-class finance business partnering service on forecasting and reporting. This will include supporting G7s to do review of monthly forecasts, ensuring the team provides coherent, insightful commentaries. Discuss budgets and forecasts with Directors regularly to make sure they understand and takes ownership. Ensure variances that will lead to financial or delivery issues are properly understood, escalated and (where possible) mitigated.
- Provide quality management information to the DG and DG-led portfolio boards ensuring that forecasts are scrutinised thoroughly and plans to manage within budgets are agreed and implemented.
- Uphold good governance and financial management by ensuring Directors and their SLTs are following regular financial processes (month end, change control process etc.), have good financial governance in place, and that SROs feel accountable for their budgets.
- Represent DLUHC Finance on key programme and governance boards – identify spending risks that are emerging so they can be tackled at an early stage. Act as an advocate to the business to the Centre so that key financial challenges including pressures are considered.
- Be a key member of the virtual team planning upcoming fiscal events. This will include working with the central Financial Strategy function to support early SR planning, but also the policy-led Housing Strategy Division so that the business is also well placed to develop a spending bid.
- Use relationships with the business to support completion of key commissions for fiscal events, annual business planning and other ad hoc central commissions. Liaising with HMT to ensure good understanding and to resolve issues as required.
- Shape the work plans of central Finance team, feeding back regularly on how processes are working and shaping improvement plans.
- Build a cohesive, properly resourced, diverse and resilient team where people want to work and feel engaged, empowered, supported and challenged. Role model good management behaviours by taking a keen interest in the development needs of the team at all levels.
- Set clear priorities for the team and review regularly. Proactively manage workloads, engaging with the business to ensure manageable pipelines.
- Become a proactive member of the SLT, supporting G6 peers and the G5 DD in management of the wider division and setting the leadership direction.
- Participate in corporate projects aimed at improving the Finance Directorate.
- This role will provide oversight of complex of the Department’s financial transactions (loans) and guarantees. They will work closely with the Department and Homes England’s credit risk experts, but will need to be comfortable learning key principles so that they can scrutinise the plans of policy effectively. Previous experience working in this area is desirable, but not essential.
- You must hold a full chartered level professional qualification awarded by a UK-recognised accountancy body (CIMA, ICAEW, ACCA, CIPFA, ICAS and Chartered Accountants Ireland).
- Lead Criteria: Prior experience working in a business partnering or strategic finance role. Ideally you will have an understanding of Managing Public Money and how the government assess policy and spend proposals, but ultimately we are looking for experience of helping guide a business through finance and governance processes with the aim of improving decision making.
- You will be a strong communicator and able to quickly build collaborative relationships with a range of partners. You will be able to solve problems, and use data and financial analysis to drive effective decisions. You will be comfortable working at pace but also able to lead your team to deliver key monthly tasks.
- You will be adept at seeing the bigger picture, ensuring that the work of your team is focussed on delivering outcomes for Finance, the business and Ministers. You will be quick to identify emerging problems, and enjoy working to resolve them.
- You will have a track record of building cohesive teams, ensuring they are well equipped to tackle a wide range of issues. You will have experience managing heavy workloads, building team resilience and protecting work life balance
- 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%
We are for everyone
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
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 1000 words referencing how you meet the criteria set out in the job description.
The interview will be of a blended nature consisting of experience, technical, behaviour, ability 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 be expected to prepare a presentation assessing Technical based on essential skills and criteria in the job description. Details of this will be sent along with interview invites
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: Seeing The Big Picture, Making Effective Decisions, Communicating and Influencing
We do not consider direct CV applications – you must apply for this role via the application link on Civil Service Jobs :
Please note that near miss offers may be made at the lower grade to candidates who do not meet the grade criteria for this campaign
Grade 6 salary
- The salary for this role is £67,889 (London) or £61,599 (National).
- For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable. If you apply for a role that requires a transfer of location, for example if you are transferring from London to a National location, your salary will be adjusted in accordance with our policy on transfer between HQ pay ranges.
- For qualified chartered accountants an additional accounting allowance of £4,000pa will also be paid. In order to receive this allowance, you must be fully qualified and in a qualifying post as agreed by the Finance Head of Profession.
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
- Leeds
- London
- Wolverhampton
- Darlington*
- Manchester
- Birmingham
- 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
Sift and Interview dates
s ifting is envisaged to take place W/C 3/6/2024 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. Due to the length of time CTC checks can take, our HR Shared Services team will contact reserve list candidates for London based roles to commence CTC checks. 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.
CTC (Counter-terrorism Clearance) :
Important note
Successful candidates for roles based in our 2 Marsham Street building must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check and the process can take up to 8 weeks to complete.
Please note that successful candidates will need to pass the CTC security checks – this requires you to have been resident in the UK for the past 3 years. Please refer to the DLUHC Notes on Security Clearance section of our Candidate Pack for further information on Counter Terrorism Clearance (CTC).
Candidate Pack Information
Please see attached Candidate pack for further information.
Before starting your application it’s 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
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check (opens in a new window) . See our vetting charter (opens in a new window) .
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality Requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
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) .
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) .
Apply and further information
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
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Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Gareth Caller
- Email : gareth.caller@levellingup.gov.uk
- Email : recruitment@levellingup.gov.uk