Finance Business Partner in Manchester

Location: Bristol, Darlington, London, Manchester, Wolverhampton

Are you looking for a role where your financial skills and insight directly shape policy and delivery? Do you have the confidence to challenge, support and influence decision‑makers? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you to join our team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and we’d love to hear from you!

MHCLG Finance is an exciting and varied place to work. We work closely with teams across the department, including policy and finance, and externally, such as HMT, to develop government policy on issues ranging from the government’s local growth agenda, building more homes, and tackling homelessness and rough sleeping. We ensure policies are value for money, deliverable and provide analysis, translate data and offer financial advice to provide insight. We are friendly teams who prioritise development and wellbeing with ample chance for stretch in these roles. Successful candidates will have access to extensive professional development resources as part of the Government Finance Community, including career development support. We are constantly seeking to improve how we work and welcome innovation. We are looking forward to hiring people with a range of backgrounds and perspectives to bring new expertise and fresh thinking.

The post holder will be supporting a range of Departmental priorities in policy areas as a Finance Business Partner (FBP) within our Finance & Value: Communities, Resilience, Growth and Corporate team. This team leads on supporting delivery of the local government, growth and communities agenda to revive the fortunes of overlooked parts of the country. It also supports delivery of integration programmes, resilience and emergencies, building safety, as well as directly supporting the Chief Finance Officer and the critical role of our corporate functions.

Main Responsibilities:

• Building strong relationships through being confident and credible with stakeholders to ensure you become a trusted advisor, ensuring principles such as value for money and wider objectives are considered effectively during policy development and fiscal events.
• Working closely with central strategy, policy, and finance colleagues across the department to bring together complex information on the financial implications of policy options, demonstrating a willingness to be a team player.
• Providing clear financial advice, analysis and challenge to support effective decision‑making across the Department, including consideration of overarching principles.
• Liaising with a diverse range of stakeholders to help develop high quality business cases for new funding schemes, providing expert advice for business cases on Green Book and Managing Public Money principles.
• Demonstrating strong communications skills and supporting directorates in maintaining an understanding of their budgeting position whilst producing robust forecasts, providing advice and support to colleagues whilst ensuring issues are identified and correctly dealt with as required.
• Ensuring the financial systems containing forecasts and working budgets are kept up to date with clear audit trails and running the necessary financial reports, identifying trends and providing insight to senior stakeholders.
• Independently producing high quality outputs at pace, being flexible to emerging priorities and pressures, with a strong attention to detail then being able to confidently and effectively present this information.

Person Specification:

• Candidates will have strong problem solving, collaboration and communication skills with the ability to deliver at pace whilst effectively managing competing priorities.
• Prior experience working in a business partnering or strategic finance role is desirable but not essential. We are also interested in hearing from candidates from a policy background who are willing to develop their finance skills.
• Strengths we are looking for include providing insight and strategic understanding to ensure financial objectives are embedded into the decision‑making process.
• Analysing and interpreting numerical information and communicating it clearly, making the connection with real‑world outcomes and political needs.
• The ability to build a network across MHCLG and other government departments that support collaborative working in order to deliver high quality outputs, for example on excel, that can be used to present to senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrating the confidence, composure and credibility needed to challenge and influence senior stakeholders in a considered and professional manner, influencing them effectively when required.
• Recognising change as an opportunity to deliver efficiency and innovation acting as an agent for change when you identify the chance to protect, drive and add value.
• Independently work at pace to tight deadlines – you will be responsible for delivering multiple pieces of work simultaneously, needing to be proactive in managing your workload.
• Be a qualified accountant or have a demonstrable willingness to qualify, ideally through actively studying for an accountancy qualification (an accountancy allowance is available to successful CCAB qualified candidates: CIMA, CIPFA, ACCA, ICAEW, ICAS, ICAI).

For more information and to apply, please visit our website via the apply button below.