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PURPOSE OF JOB
To be responsible for the financial integrity and control of the Directorate, working directly with Cabinet Members, the Strategic Management team, Headteachers and Governors to achieve Directorate business objectives. Jobholder has collective responsibility, as a member of the Finance Strategy Board, for the development of corporate council financial strategy, policy, financial standards, processes and procedures.
Main Duties and Responsibilities
Direct the provision of professional financial support, analysis and advice to the Children, Families and Education Directorate including Cabinet Members, Senior Management Team (SMT), schools and all Budget Managers to ensure effective financial decisions are made.
Identify financial strategies including costs, options for funding and potential use of external partnerships as part of the policy generation, development and governance of the Directorate.
Build a medium term financial plan and annual budget, which reflects Council policy objectives that is reviewed and updated regularly. The plan will cover revenue and capital plans, be fully integrated with other Directorate service strategies and take account of any central or local government financial constraints.
Direct the production of individual school budgets ensuring that policy objectives of Members, SMT and the School Funding Forum are met and delivering budgets within the financial and time constraints.
Ensure the existence of effective strategic financial monitoring processes across the Directorate (including schools, where appropriate). Ensure budgets are balanced and accounts closed each year in line with Directorate and Corporate polices and timetables.
Ensure the effective financial administration of the Directorate, including the application of the Corporate finance framework. Jobholder is responsible for ensuring the function is compliant with financial regulations, adheres to guidelines about debt management and meets corporate www.kent.gov.uk 12 Kent – a great place to work financial targets. Jobholder is responsible for ensuring financial frameworks are understood and applied by staff within the Directorate.
Be collectively responsible for the finance programme of change, including the development of Corporate controls and processes and the management and direction of cross-directorate business improvement teams. Jobholder will be responsible for presenting the findings and recommendations of any business improvement teams, to the Finance Strategy Board, and delivering agreed change within the Directorate.
Develop and maintain financial professional standards within the Directorate. Maintain external professional knowledge, including knowledge of developments in funding, reporting, grant allocation and lobbying processes, in order to apply to financial analysis and decision making for the Directorate.
Be responsible for the line management of finance staff, including the definition of work plans, performance management, training and development and staff and customer satisfaction.
Support and develop partnership working and arrangements e.g. with school governors, providing a finance lead in partnership discussions and having an overview of the probity of financial arrangements.
Be responsible for tracking and reporting on all specific grants and other sources of external funding, ensuring that variations are identified and the implications of these changes accommodated through budget monitoring and MTP processes.
Track changes in national legislation that have an impact on the Directorate and designing appropriate financial responses, so that County Council can respond effectively to any consultation documents and can achieve maximum influence in national strategies where possible.
Ensure close liaison with Exchequer Services with regard to debt management and debt recovery processes and manage the Directorate’s debt to ensure maximum cash flow for the Authority.
Act as lead for various Directorate initiatives e.g. chairing the income generation group and honorary treasurer of the Kent Foundation
Direct and co-ordinate the development and maintenance of a sound strategic framework for financial management (for schools and all other units) and ensure adherence to directorate financial procedures whilst facilitating effective delivery of financial activity. As a member of the Finance Strategy Board, contribute to the development and implementation of organisation wide standards of financial management.
Person Specification
Knowledge and Experience
The jobholder will be a professionally qualified accountant (CCAB) and have 5-10 years post qualification experience at a senior level. The jobholder will have experience of working in/with a Service Directorate and specific experience of Directorate policy development at a strategic level.
Skills:
A focus on the customer - jobholder will require a customer focus, ensuring the function delivers the service needs of its key customers and stakeholders. Jobholder must seek to improve continuously the service of the function.
Personal resourcefulness - jobholder needs to be confident in their approach and use their initiative in order to identify and lead service improvement projects, policy change initiatives and corporate policy and process improvements.
Relationship building - jobholder should possess excellent influencing and persuasion skills in order to build effective relationships both within and outside the Directorate, including Directors, Members, Senior Managers, Headteachers, Governors and external bodies who may have differing business objectives.
Ways 2 Success:
Managing for success - jobholder should possess the ability to lead and motivate a highly qualified workforce, ensuring staff understand the finance function vision and their role in delivering the finance business plan
Scope for Impact:
As a very senior member of the Finance function within the Authority, the jobholder should have a considerable influence upon the development of the overall County Council financial policies/processes e.g. selection and development of new financial systems, approach to budget management etc. Failure to influence could jeopardise the effectiveness and suitability of financial management arrangements in supporting the business objectives of the Directorate.
Within the CFE Directorate the jobholder will lead and improve the overall financial quality assurance programme on behalf of the Finance Director through the budgetary control www.kent.gov.uk 14 Kent - a great place to work and financial integrity of all Service Units. The result should be improving feedback from the external monitoring agencies such as Ofsted and external auditors as well as internal stakeholders. A practical example of this is the work with Unit Heads to ensure that robust plans are in place (and subsequently delivered) to deal with the budget impact of MTP savings or other policy alterations while minimising the impact on service delivery. A further example of this sort of work is leading the complete review of the schools formula budget including working with Headteachers, Governors and Members to deliver a funding distribution that maximises the opportunities for all children within the scope of the overall resources available.
With regard to the development of the budget the jobholder will, by way of considerable political diplomacy, influence and help lead SMT and Cabinet Members to agree upon a budget which both meets their priorities, as far as it is able, and the local and legal constraints placed upon them. Failure to influence events to this extent will lead to an unbalanced budget and/or a budget that does not reflect Cabinet Members priorities or legal requirements.
Failure to implement financial processes and procedures effectively in the Directorate, particularly on budget monitoring exposes the County Council to unacceptable risks of overspending or underachieving its business objectives.