Cost Controller in Worthing

Location: Durrington, Worthing

Contract Type: Permanent

Hours: 37

Salary: From £45k depending on skills and experience

Closing Date:

About The Role

The Cost Controller is responsible for the end-to-end financial control of the Smart Metering Programme, ensuring accurate forecasting, reporting and governance across Opex and Capex.

What You Will Be Responsible For

• Maintain a single source of financial truth, reporting consistently and on time at all levels.
• Capture and manage all Opex and Capex spend at a detailed level.
• Provide end-to-end financial management, including tracking, reporting and analysis; purchase order and invoice processing; and finance system updates.
• Coach workstream leads on forecasting and profiling spend.
• Identify and report budget risks and opportunities, with clear actions and mitigations.
• Month-end / period close alignment: ownership of timetable, cut-off, accruals/prepayments, and reconciliation steps.
• Capex governance & accounting compliance: making sure Capex vs Opex treatment is correct, evidence is retained, and approvals meet policy.
• Maintain an audit trail of budget approvals and subsequent changes.
• Change control impact on budget: formal linkage between scope change requests and budget movements.
• Vendor/contractor cost control: checking invoices against contract/SOW/milestones, rate cards, timesheets, and ensuring correct cost coding.
• Data quality controls: checks on master data/cost centres/WBS, and resolving exceptions.
• Contribute financial inputs to programme and governance reporting packs.
• Ensure the full financial scope is captured and kept up to date.
• Stakeholder cadence: running regular cost reviews with workstream leads (weekly/fortnightly), not just coaching forecasting.
• Benefits/ROI linkage: ensuring costs can be mapped to business case lines/benefits themes so reporting tells a coherent story.

What You’ll Bring To The Role

• Significant experience in a project finance, management accounting, or finance co-ordinator role, supporting programmes/projects.
• Proven experience managing detailed Opex/Capex budgets, including actuals, forecast and variance analysis.
• Hands-on experience with purchase order and invoice processing, cost coding and resolving exceptions.
• Experience working to month-end timelines and maintaining a clear audit trail of budget changes.
• Strong Excel skills and experience maintaining data quality across financial trackers.
• Experience using finance systems and project cost structures; experience updating Capex systems is desirable.
• Experience partnering with Finance Business Partners and coaching non-finance stakeholders to improve forecast accuracy.
• Experience in a regulated or highly governed environment is desirable.

Our Commitment to Diversity

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic. If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.

Additional Information

In line with Southern Water’s security requirements, successful candidates will be required to provide evidence of their identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record check (DBS) and verification of their employment and/or education history for the past three years. Appointment to this role is subject to the successful completion of all pre-employment checks, including security vetting. Please note that if a candidate does not meet the required security standards or fails to pass the vetting process, Southern Water reserves the right to withdraw the offer of employment. Some positions may also require higher levels of security vetting, which may involve providing additional documentation.