Finance Business Manager

About Us

West Sussex County Council is in a period of change. Increasing demographic pressures, continuing challenges to provide residents and communities with greater levels of choice and control over services, and the tighter financial constraints placed on the authority, mean that the Council needs to change the way it operates.

The role will be supporting the Safeguarding, Planning, Performance and Directly Provided Services Directorate: See more information relating to the Adult Social Care Settings: Careers in Directly Provided Services.

About The Job

Salary: £43,516 to £46,549 per annumWorking Pattern: Full-time (37 hours per week) Mon to Friday 9am- 5pmContract Length: PermanentBase Location: Burnside Day Opportunity service, Burgess Hill. Hybrid working and county wide travel.

This role has a base location detailed, we do operate a 'Smarter working' approach, this will be discussed at interview, for what works best for you and the team.

Effective business management develops and delivers support to Directly Provided Services as well as the Safeguarding and Access team. Your role will enable our services to operate effectively & efficiently.

We're looking for a finance professional with experience to deliver a finance business partnering model, which includes a full range of high-quality financial management and accountancy service. You'll be responsible for advising & influencing the service to make informed financial decisions & have a direct impact on service delivery.

Initially it will involve working with Adult Social Care budgets. The service is experiencing a period of unprecedented change, where people are living longer resulting in significant growth in demand for social care services. Since we want to make sure West Sussex is a great place to live, the County Council recognises this challenge & has an ambitious improvement programme. At the heart of this is an aim to promote independence by enabling people to stay healthier & live in their homes & communities for longer. Linking financial data with performance information, & with a naturally enquiring mind, you will play an essential role in supporting the service to build a sustainable model for delivering adult social care services.

The successful candidate will work alongside, our Assistant Director, 3 Heads of Services and 5 Area Service Managers. Within the Directly Provided Services we support 6 Residential Care homes, 7 Day Opportunity Services & Shared Lives, where self-employed shared lives, carers open up their own homes to provide support on a long- or short-term basis.

Who are we looking for?

As well as being a finance professional with experience of delivering a finance business partnering model, you will also need to be:

• Strategic thinker - someone who can think independently and beyond the surface of a task/ issue to provide a strategic view and added value to the service that you support.
• Relationship manager - someone with the ability to successfully manage key relationships with partners.
• Critical friend - someone with the ability to challenge, persuade, negotiate and influence the service that you support.

In addition, you will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Ability to research, analyse and interpret information to make effective judgements to review the effectiveness of activities and service provision, plan long term and set timescales.
• Ability to identify and analyse risks, and manipulate complex financial data relating to large budgets in the region of £30m.
• Ability to anticipate problems, plan solutions and make sound pragmatic problem-solving decisions and recommendations, which will have a wider service impact, particularly in relation to providing a varied and complex service, resource issues and partnership building.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence the actions of others and communicate information which may be complex and contentious. Including the ability to negotiate solutions across wide areas of the business and successfully convince others of the need to take a specific course of action.
• Ability to challenge existing practices and identify innovative solutions within the required framework.
• Ability to articulate problems and lead staff to a position where they can find and implement solutions.

Qualifications &/experience

• Please refer to the attached job description for the full list of qualifications skills we are looking for & this will be used for our short listing criteria.

Rewards & Benefits

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. For a full list of the benefits offered to you as a West Sussex County Council employee you can find them on our Rewards and Benefits page.

How to Apply:

Upload your CV and complete the application explaining the key skills listed on the Job Description and experience you can bring to the role ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS check/ portability as required.