Purchasing Officer in Oldham

This is an exciting time to join Children’s Services in Oldham. We’re looking for a committed and motivated person to provide high quality professional support to frontline children’s social workers and managers to help families keep children safe. If you’re looking to make a real difference, Children’s Social Care Services are looking for people like you to provide effective and comprehensive Purchasing Officer support, ensuring service financial support needs are met efficiently and effectively and contributing to continuous service improvement.

If you join us, we will ensure that you have everything needed to do your job well and support you to progress in your career. We have a loyal, supportive, and enthusiastic workforce who will give you a very warm welcome.

Key responsibilities:

• Administrate and deliver the day to day financial and purchasing function for Children’s Social Care services.
• Set up, maintain and monitor a range of financial and budget information, analysing statistical and financial data.
• Undertake standard checks and means testing to ensure that the right people are receiving the correct amounts of money.
• Conduct regular quality checks on financial payments in line with procedures.
• Reconcile and track invoices to ensure they are paid in a timely manner.
• Run data reports, and identify, analyse and correct errors.
• Co-ordinate and minute finance decision making panels.

Key requirements:

• Analytical and research skills to gather and collate information from a range of sources and make recommendations to aid decision making.
• Excellent ICT skills to be able to word process and use electronic recording systems to keep payments recording up to date, and to run payment cycles and produce statistical reports and analysis.
• Organisational skills to prioritise own work, working under pressure to potentially conflicting deadlines, whilst maintaining quality and performance standards.
• Experience of working in a financial role.
• Ability to maintain clear and accurate financial and audit records.

We want Oldham to have vibrant, safe neighbourhoods where people are proud to live with opportunities for healthier, more fulfilled lives; and a sustainable, thriving economy. As we look to the future, the challenges may be significant, but so are the opportunities. We’ve identified three missions with our residents and partners, focusing on what will deliver the biggest impact: A Great Place to Live, Healthier, Happier Lives, and Green and Growing. We’re looking for candidates who will support us to achieve our ambitions.

Our values and behaviours:

By driving innovation, investing in our people, and championing our communities, we will ensure that Oldham continues to be a place where everyone can live their best life. To support this, we have three core values which define who we are and how we operate: ‘Proud, Ambitious, and Together’. These shape our culture, inform our decisions, and inspire us to deliver on our commitments to the people of Oldham.

We have translated these values into five behaviours which guide our actions and are the standards we hold ourselves to, day in and day out:

• Work with a resident focus.
• Support local leaders.
• Committed to the borough.
• Deliver high performance.
• Take ownership and drive change.

Our benefits package:

At Oldham Council we offer a great benefits package for our employees, which includes:

• 25 days annual leave which increases after 5 and 10 years’ service.
• The option to purchase additional annual leave.
• An attractive LGPS benefit pension scheme with the option to make shared cost additional voluntary contributions.
• Discounted gym membership with Oldham Active.
• Staff discount scheme for shopping, entertainment, eating-out, eating-in, travel, motoring and more.
• Salary sacrifice scheme for home and electronics and Cycle to Work.
• Wellbeing support, including a Mental Health First Aider network and an Employment Assistance Programme that provides 24 hours access to advice and support.
• Staff recognition and celebration events.
• Peer support groups.

We work closely with employees to help them work at their best, including making adjustments such as flexible working, describing available working patterns, providing equipment or making changes to the workplace. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and therefore expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.