Assistant Director Finance – Tameside MBC

**This role has now been filled, please get in contact with us if you are looking for a new role and wish to let us know your requirements**

Assistant Director Finance (Deputy Section 151 officer)

Salary: £94,859                      Greater Manchester

Tameside is one of the 10 local authorities that make up Greater Manchester.  Nestled between the buzz of Manchester City Centre and the beauty of the Peak District, both on our doorstep.  We have clear and stable leadership, and in the last few years have created an integrated management structure with our local CCG.  Our vision is captured in our shared plan – Our People Our Place Our Plan.  This ground-breaking approach works for us and more importantly, is delivering the benefits of an integrated system for our people.

Like many local authorities Covid has hit us hard. We now face a challenging future. Whilst in a reasonably strong financial position for the next two years, our medium-term financial position is uncertain.  Our AD Finance will be critical to ensuring our medium-term financial strategy is delivered whilst leading and driving across the whole organisation the transformation needed. 

Our AD Finance will join an organisation that knows itself, is aware of the challenges we face, understands risk and is committed to success. Delivering a financially sustainable future will involve embedding a new culture of financial accountability across the organisation.  This will need clear financial management balancing challenge and support, honesty and transparency, resilience and drive and tenacity aligned to judgement.  Building highly productive and positive relationships across the Council and CCG will be key to success.

We have to deliver significant savings for us to thrive. The role will work particularly closely with Children’s Services and our Growth Directorate to support the delivery of key corporate objectives.  Our new AD Finance will be the lead local government finance specialist in the Council, reporting to our Director of Finance, who has come from health. Because of Tameside’s unique structure, this role will have a significant corporate profile, licence to operate across the council and visibility across Greater Manchester.

Priorities will be:

  • Embedding new disciplines and accountabilities to deliver the 2021/22 budget
  • Working with Children’s Services to manage demand-led costs, especially those associated with our high numbers of looked after children
  • Working with our Growth Directorate to secure future investments across key sites, delivering high quality housing and a boost to our economy
  • Delivering further efficiencies, greater corporate benefits and improved integration from our coming together with the CCG
  • Laying the foundation for the 2022/23 budget cycle, including building buy-in to a challenging Medium Term Financial Strategy
  • Building and developing the team to keep delivering operational excellence alongside strategic challenge, support and judgement across the Council
  • Working with corporate colleagues to develop and support new ways of working post-Covid, including digital and IT modernisation
  • Looking, in the medium term, at the future for Inspired Spaces Tameside (our Local Education Partnership) and Active Tameside (our Leisure Trust)

The new AD Finance will have a track record of success as a senior manager.  They’ll be a qualified accountant (sufficient to be the s.151 officer) with deep local government knowledge and insights, probably gained from significant experience in local government.  They’ll have had exposure to high demand services (Children’s and Adult’s Services) but will also bring significant experience of working closely on key capital and regeneration programmes.  They’ll have the capacity to develop a culture of accountability across the Council in how finances are managed, ensuring people deliver on commitments.  They’ll bring highly developed political antennae, excellent judgement that’s been tested at the most senior levels, a positive approach to relationships that builds effective partnerships and good commercial insights.  

The AD Finance will lead a team of around 60 finance professionals focused on all local authority finance specialisms. Revenues and benefits and exchequer services sit elsewhere in the organisation.

Kathy Roe, Director of Finance

More Information

Timetable

ADF – MilestoneDate
Closing dateMonday 22nd March
Technical (First) Intervieww/c 12th April
Assessment centre and Final Panel intervieww/c 26th + 27th April