Senior Finance Business Partner

Two Senior Finance Business Partner roles are available in the Finance Business Partnering Team.

The Team is organised into three areas who support the Director Generals (DGs) and their teams to effectively discharge their financial accountabilities. This includes providing support and guidance to directors to enable effective financial management of their budgets including oversight of the arms length bodies where applicable.

Finance is high on the agenda in the department and we play a pivotal role in supporting and shaping the way the resources are allocated to deliver the departments strategic and operational priorities.

We are the go to team for teams across the department, advising and providing robust challenge on the affordability and value for money of policy development and investment decisions, business planning and providing insight on budgetary performance against the delivery of our departmental objectives.

Senior Finance Business Partners - We are advertising 2 roles covering the Departments Policy group. Both roles will provide high quality financial advice and analysis to colleagues on exciting policy areas as set out below. In addition, the roles include engagement with external finance teams at a portfolio of DCMS sponsored Arms Length Bodies (ALBs).

Role 1 - Museums and Galleries - covers core policy areas, as well as managing a subset of the 15 sponsored Museums and Galleries (M&Gs) such as the Science Museum and Natural History Museum.

Role 2 - Sport, Gambling, Visitor Economy and Loans - covers core policy areas, as well as managing ALBs such as Gambling Commission, Sport England and UK Sport.

The primary responsibilities of the two roles are as follows:

• Support senior leaders to embed effective financial management within DCMS ensuring the successful implementation, development and improvement of policies and programmes
• Provide high quality financial advice and timely financial management data, information and analysis to directors and their teams
• Provide advice and guidance on all financial matters as necessary, from accounting to budgeting, input to fiscal events (e.g. Government Estimates process, Budget and Spending Review)
• Support policy teams in development and scrutiny of business cases in line with HMTs Green Book, providing expert advice and challenge
• Lead assurance activities and effective financial oversight of Arms Length Bodies (ALBs), including regular engagement at senior levels and attendance at Audit and Risk Committees. Provide insight and challenge to ALB financial performance to DCMS sponsor teams and critical challenge, support and guidance to ALBs on their forecasts.
• Build and manage effective relationships with your Policy teams and ALBs to provide a trusted, single point of contact between Finance and the business.
• Actively work to promote good financial management through driving up the financial capability of non-finance teams
• Deliver a customer-focussed service that balances policy priorities with the broader financial needs of the Department
• Rigorously drive value-for-money thinking in all of our work
• Draft papers and prepare Ministerial / Senior Official submissions as necessary (including providing finance advice on policy submissions)

You may be required to carry out additional duties according to business need.

The ideal candidate would have the following key skills and experience,

Essential requirements

• Highly numerate and literate with full CCAB or CIMA accountancy qualification or equivalent (or part qualified and working towards full qualification)
• Experience of providing financial analysis in a policy or corporate context including on projects and programmes
• Collaborate, able to work effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders and with experience of working with senior leaders
• Experience of supporting development and review of business cases
• Solutions-oriented and able to manage competing priorities to tight deadlines

Desirable skills

• Business partnering experience within a government or public sector context
• Working knowledge of Managing Public Money and central government accounting and budgeting rules
• Experience working with Arms Length Bodies in a finance context
• Experience of line management

We are running an information session where prospective applicants can find out more about the role. This will be hosted by Anita Raj and Phil Lewis and will take place on:

Thursday 7th November 2024 at 15:00 (Virtual)

The session will be an opportunity to hear more about the role, the team and wider directorate and the department. It will also be an opportunity for you to ask any questions.

Please register your interest here and you will be sent an invitation. Please note that the session will not focus on the DCMS recruitment process, please direct any queries that you have on this topic (timelines, reasonable adjustments, onboarding etc) to [email protected]

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving