JOB DESCRIPTION

Overview

The Chief Operating Officer Group includes many of MOJ’s critical corporate services, including:

• Finance Operations Business Partnering

• Strategic Finance & Partnerships

• Financial Management, Control, Risk & Governance

• Commercial

• Property

• Planning & Performance

• Strategy, Priorities & Innovation

• Business Architecture & Transformation (dotted line)

Finance

Financial Strategy & Partnerships is at the heart the Ministry’s decision making. With teams supporting our public bodies (often called ALBs - arm’s length bodies), the Office of the Accountant General who run the courts funds office, and the Financial Strategy and Planning team. Each team has a deep experience and is a key part of decision making for in the Ministry.

We own the annual and medium-term financial planning cycle. The partnerships we establish facilitate constructive challenge of the business and build bridges across our function, policy groups and Treasury, and with our Public Bodies. Alongside this, we work with the Court Funds Office to ensure that funding held by the courts on behalf of vulnerable users is invested well and generates a return. All of this ultimately supports the delivery of the Departments objectives.

Our vision is simple - each of our specialist teams supports the delivery of the Ministry’s strategic outcomes including value for money.

About the Role

The main purpose of the role is to provide strategic leadership, support and challenge to business areas across the department, and to ensure that decisions are made with reference to financial information and consequences, putting finance at the heart of decision making.

The lead will spend a significant proportion of their time within the business, interacting regularly to build and sustain trust, ensuring they keep strategic oversight of all agendas.

This role will also require partnering with the Commercial & Contract teams, wider Finance, Business and Functional areas and external stakeholders. The role holder will also own and drive forward the department's commercial finance policies and initiatives, sharing best practice and collaborating with colleagues from Other Government Departments.

Main Activities / Responsibilities

This role in the Commercial Finance team plays a crucial role to lead and support delivery of the department’s objectives. These include but not limited to, monitoring supplier financial resilience, providing technical, commercial and corporate finance expertise, identifying, managing and remediating commercial and corporate finance risks, providing expert financial advice to support major commercial and change programme decisions and supporting the Department to protect and maximise its income.

The job holder will be required to undertake the following duties and responsibilities which may vary in accordance to business needs.

Risk Mitigation & Management:

Provide expert corporate and commercial advice and insight on the financial implications of commercial contracts and major programme decisions.

Lead/support complex reviews of existing contracts to ensure MoJ is gaining the maximum economic value and applying the financial elements of the contract fully.

Lead/support on investigations and complex financial analysis.

Lead/support on major contract issues with suppliers and support tender process on financial matters for major programmes.

Provide specialist finance input into dispute and claims issues, including engagement with 3rd party suppliers.

Commercial Strategy & Policy:

Provide expert corporate and commercial finance advice on the financial implications of commercial strategies and decisions for major change programmes and existing commercial arrangements.

Develop expertise in the end-to-end commercial cycle on commercial arrangement types, supplier legal structures, payment mechanism (including payment by results), financial contract clauses, financial rights and obligations, market players, macro-economic impacts (e.g. inflation and foreign exchange), financial protections and guarantee models and overarching bid/cost model requirements.

Develop commercial finance policies/guidance and support their introduction and implementation in the relevant business areas. These will include learnings from key cross-government guidance documents.

Supplier Financial and Market Monitoring:

Provide expert analysis of financial statements on the relative strength and ongoing financial viability of suppliers.

Have an expert understanding of, and provide professional insight and advice in response to, market dynamics within key and applicable sectors.

Lead/support on process improvement on supplier financial health monitoring, including developing the service offer across other government Departments. This includes working with other functional areas and Commercial in developing tools that allow easy analysis of outputs.

Investment/Business Case Reviews:

Lead financial assurance reviews of business cases over £10m, providing advice to the approval bodies on the financial aspects, in order to influence major programmes on commercial and finance decisions.

Work collaboratively with other functional experts in forming your overarching assessment.

Upskill MoJ Finance colleagues to help ensure that they are able to deliver good quality financial analysis within business cases and carry out 1st line assurance responsibilities on business cases.

Lead on process improvement around governance of investment assurance, specifically around finance requirements, with the intention to work with Other Government Departments to leverage best practice and share ours.

Develop to become the MoJ’s central expert in relation to Finance Case preparation and application of the HM Treasury Green Book (Investment appraisal and evaluation).

Other duties:

There will be opportunities to support the Income team in occasional time-bound activities. This will be a development opportunity for the role-holder and suitability for working on Income projects will not form part of the recruitment process for this role. Examples of this might be refreshing the data and analysis supporting the cost calculations for one group of HMCTS fees, or writing a submission to ministers requesting approval for the use of funds raised from confiscation orders.

The post holder will be required undertake wider leadership work to support the department and to work in a flexible way and undertake any other duties reasonably requested by line management which are commensurate with the grade and level of responsibility of this post. This may also include working closely with other MoJ Finance staff and functions to develop solutions/problem-solve, engaging in project work to drive finance improvements.

Essential Criteria

The post holder will have:

• The ability to lead and influence others, using verbal and written communication to articulate their thoughts, ideas, and rationale in order to gain agreement (Statement of Suitability)

• The ability to work across multiple areas, bringing together expertise from a range of teams to drive valued outcomes (Managing a Quality Service)

• The ability to research a new policy/service and build a working knowledge quickly, in order to influence business decisions (Communicating and Influencing)

• Experience of building productive and long-lasting relationships with others and establishing mutual respect (Working Together)

• Experience of communicating financial information to a non-financial audience (Statement of Suitability)

• Must hold, or be working towards, a recognised financial qualification (CCAB, CIMA or equivalent)

In addition to salary, a pensionable, non-contractual specialist allowance will be applied to this role, only for fully qualified finance staff. Specialist allowances apply to certain roles only, are non-transferable to other roles and are subject to annual review.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of providing professional finance and corporate services to senior stakeholders and influencing business decisions

• Experience of continual re-prioritisation, in order to meet business need

• Experience in leading a team and driving forward wider corporate objectives

• Established deployment of technical corporate and commercial finance expertise

• The ability or propensity to explore and develop the use of AI to improve delivery in appropriate areas of the role

Please note that whilst we don’t assess or score ‘desirable’ criteria, we may consider evidence provided that demonstrates meeting the desirable elements of the role, only after essential criteria is assessed and where there is a need to differentiate between closely scored candidates. 

Application process

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.

Sift

Please refer to the essential criteria above.

Behaviours

Please provide examples of how you have met each of the behaviours below:

• Communicating and Influencing (lead behaviour)

• Managing a Quality Service

• Working Together

• Seeing the Big Picture

Experience

CV - Please submit an anonymous copy of your CV.

Statement of Suitability - Please use your statement to explain how you are the right person for this role linking it to your skills, experience and any evidence in relation to the essential criteria that has been outlined.

Technical

Please answer 'yes' to meeting the qualification requirement if you are either:
1) Must hold a recognised financial qualification (CCAB, CIMA or equivalent) or 
2) Be working towards a recognised financial qualification (CCAB, CIMA or equivalent)

If you are answering yes to option 2, please upload a note indicating this and include if part qualified, which stage have you achieved so far?

If we receive a large number of applications, we will carry out an initial sift on the lead criteria of Communicating and Influencing.

Please refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details, including by grade:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles/success-profiles-civil-service-behaviours#why-we-assess-behaviours

Candidates invited to Interview

Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely via MS Teams.

During the interview, we will be assessing you on Behaviours (below) and Strengths (not shared in advance) from the Success Profiles framework.

• Communicating and Influencing (lead behaviour)

• Managing a Quality Service

• Working Together

• Seeing the Big Picture

If you wish to find out more about the role, please contact - Chris Kempton - chris.kempton@justice.gov.uk