Head of Finance in Huddersfield

Salary: £44,105

Hours: 30 hours, Monday - Friday

Location: Huddersfield

Responsible to: Finance & Corporate Services Director

Responsible for: Finance Team

Benefits: Entry into Peoples Pension, death in service benefit (3 x salary), out of pocket expenses, free on-site parking, free access to confidential and extensive wellbeing support, generous holiday entitlement (26 days plus bank holidays rising to 31 days after 5 years for a full time employee, pro rata for part time), free tea / coffee, sight tests and flu jabs and excellent learning and development opportunities.

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

In this key senior role at Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice, where every penny helps us support children with life-shortening conditions and their families, you’ll provide strategic and operational leadership of the finance function, ensuring strong financial stewardship, robust governance and clear insight to support organisational sustainability and impact. Working closely with the finance & corporate services director, senior management team, trustee board and budget holders, you’ll shape financial strategy, lead budgeting, forecasting and long-term financial planning, and provide constructive challenge that enables confident decision-making across the organisation. This is an exciting opportunity for someone with strong senior management experience, excellent technical finance skills and a clear vision for continuous improvement. A key priority will be to maximise the potential of our new finance system, which went live on 1st April, embedding improved processes, better reporting, stronger data quality and greater efficiency across the finance function.

If you’re looking for a strategic finance leadership role where you can strengthen systems, support great decision-making and see the value of your work every day, then we want to hear from you.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Role Summary

The Head of Finance provides strategic and operational leadership for the organisation’s finance function, ensuring accurate reporting, strong financial control, effective governance and clear financial insight to support sustainability, accountability and impact. As a senior member of the management team, the role combines strategic financial leadership with hands-on oversight of reporting, compliance, payroll, audit, budgeting, forecasting and team development. You will play a central role in improving financial systems and processes, including embedding and maximising the benefit of the new finance system implemented on 1st April.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide strategic and operational leadership of the finance function, ensuring a high-quality, efficient, compliant and responsive service.
• Contribute as a senior management leader, bringing financial expertise, commercial awareness and constructive challenge to organisational decision-making.
• Lead, manage and develop the finance team, ensuring clear accountability, effective performance management, wellbeing and continuous improvement.
• Lead budgeting, forecasting, cashflow management and long-term financial planning, ensuring robust oversight of financial sustainability, risk and resource allocation.
• Provide clear, timely and insightful financial reporting and analysis to budget holders, senior leaders, the Senior Management Team, Trustee Board and relevant Sub Committees.
• Oversee accurate monthly management accounts, statutory reporting, year-end accounts and preparation for external audit.
• Maintain and strengthen financial controls, governance frameworks, policies and procedures across the organisation and trading company.
• Ensure compliance with relevant statutory, regulatory, charity accounting, payroll, tax and reporting requirements.
• Oversee payroll delivery, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, appropriate controls, reconciliations and alignment with People processes.
• Lead finance process improvement, maximising the benefits of systems, data and automation to improve efficiency, reporting quality, controls and user experience.
• Embed and develop effective workflows, data quality and reporting from the new finance system to support better decision-making across the organisation.
• Lead and strengthen procurement and contract management processes, ensuring value for money, clear accountability, appropriate controls and effective supplier relationships.
• Lead the annual insurance renewal process, coordinating input from key stakeholders and ensuring appropriate cover, effective governance and clear oversight of organisational risks.
• Support effective risk management across the organisation, ensuring financial, operational and compliance risks are identified, monitored and reported clearly.

We also expect all staff to undertake any other duties as are within the scope, spirit and purpose of the job, the title of the post and its grading, as requested by your line manager or their higher level of authority.

Person Specification

Essential Criteria

• Fully qualified accountant, or qualified by significant relevant experience, with strong technical finance knowledge.
• Strong senior management experience, including leading a finance function, influencing organisational decision-making and working with senior leaders, Boards or Committees.
• A strong systems thinker, able to see the bigger picture, generate pioneering and courageous change or improvements to the organisation.
• Significant experience of budgeting, forecasting, management accounts, payroll, audit, statutory reporting and financial controls.
• Proven ability to lead, motivate and develop a finance team, creating a compassionate culture of accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Ability to analyse and clearly communicate financial information to non-financial stakeholders.
• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to manage deadlines and competing priorities.
• Confident user of finance systems, AI and Excel, with experience of automating and improving processes, reporting and controls through better use of systems and data.
• Knowledge of SORP and charity finance.
• Experience of risk management.

Desirable Criteria

• Charity or not-for-profit experience.
• Experience in completing annual consolidated accounts, using SORP.
• Experience in completing tax returns.
• Project management experience and using software to support projects.
• Salary exchange and HMRC legislation.
• Knowledge of pension legislation.

For all of our roles we expect employees to abide by the expectations set out within the Together for Families Framework. Complying with Together for Families means that we will all act with integrity to ensure we are trusted by the people we care for, the people we work with and everyone who supports Forget Me Not.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

Please note that we are committed to equality and diversity and make the following pledge in relation to our recruitment practices; We will actively encourage and support under-represented groups to join us as employees. We will always interview you if you are an applicant with disability who meets the essential requirements of the job and will provide adjustments to the recruitment process if required. We are committed to supporting part time and flexible working; we will consider part time working requests for all our roles.