Non-Current Assets Business Partner / Financial Reporting Resource Accounts Accountant in Manchester

The NCA team is responsible for all aspects of accounting for the Home Office's non‑current assets, in total with a net book value of around £3.5 billion. The team is responsible for ensuring correct accounting for all stages of the non‑current asset lifecycle, including additions (at the purchasing stage), revaluation, depreciation and amortization, reclassification, impairment, and disposal.

We are in the process of establishing a new NCA Centre of Excellence function which is a great opportunity for you to be a part of. The NCA business partner role will work extensively with finance and non‑finance stakeholders across the department and will lead and support capital expenditure decision‑making and the NCA lifecycle throughout the year.

You will need to lead some parts and support all processes and activity within your team and liaise with wider stakeholders to develop ways of working that are able to deliver and are sufficiently robust to embed continuous improvements. In particular, you will need to lead on ensuring that the balance on the capital expenditure holding account is reduced and maintained at acceptable levels.

The role supports interim and year‑end activity and supplying evidence to auditors so that audits are delivered successfully and on time. Alongside this, the role is also responsible for reviewing and finding resolutions for NAO management letter points.

Working in the financial reporting team at the Home Office, this role is key to enabling the Home Office to publish audited financial information in the annual report and accounts. This role is responsible for producing the annual departmental group resource accounts.

You will have good analytical and reporting skills and will be able to work well with others in the immediate team and across the Home Office and wider government finance community to identify and resolve issues.

• Business partner with stakeholders within and outside of finance to maintain and improve accurate and complete records of the department’s non‑current assets.
• Managing the reconciliation between the non‑current assets register and the general ledger, including working through adjustments when necessary.
• Forecasting and managing capital and depreciation budgets (and costs) for the department.
• Leading, managing, and developing processes to ensure accurate record keeping, for example: additions, verification exercises, revaluations, impairment reviews, and disposals.
• Developing and supporting policy relating to non‑current assets to aid continuous improvement.
• Supporting the interim and year‑end NAO audits on non‑current assets.
• Managing one non‑current assets officer as part of a small non‑current assets team aiding positive personal and professional development.
• Collaborating with others across the non‑current assets function to contribute towards a positive high‑performing environment.
• Delivering monthly and annual resource accounts to a high standard, ensuring internal consistency and a clear audit trail to source data.
• Managing consolidation of arm’s length bodies (ALBs) into the Home Office group accounts.
• Developing and maintaining ALB disclosure packs for collection of data to produce group accounts.
• Reconciling financial accounts to management accounting data, and working with stakeholders to ensure consistent reporting throughout the organisation.
• Supporting in the production of quality disclosure notes which meet the requirements set out in the financial reporting manual (FReM) and relevant accounting standards.
• Identifying misstatements, and working with business areas to make correcting adjustments.
• Providing financial reporting advice consistent with the FReM and financial reporting standards.
• Contributing to the Home Office’s whole of government accounts (WGA) return and associated audit.
• Taking lessons learned from the current year to improve the process.
• Working with colleagues to ensure a robust process for incorporating the year‑end accounts into the annual report and accounts document.
• Supporting the external audit by the National Audit Office (NAO) ensuring that any resource account issues are promptly dealt with.
• Ensuring that all audit queries relating to the resource accounts are cleared swiftly.
• Supporting the wider audit with liaison on some audit areas, for example invoiced expenditure.
• Working with colleagues to ensure balance sheet maintenance work is aligned with the structure of the resource accounts.
• Supporting in ensuring the chart of accounts is up to date and reflected in the resource accounts.
• Playing an active role in the successful working of the team, including sharing knowledge on using the accounting system, helping others to understand the accounts production process, and working with colleagues across the finance community to ensure the work of the resource accounts production team is aligned with other relevant business areas.