Harlow is a great place to live and work, being ideally located on the London Liverpool Street to Stansted/Cambridge rail line, and only four miles from the M25. Harlow is at the forefront of a significant growth agenda in the heart of the UK Innovation Corridor, an area recognised as one of the UK’s fastest growing regions. As a key member of the Harlow & Gilston Garden Town partnership, Harlow Council is driving forward an ambitious vision to not only generate growth within the town, but to effect a transformation not seen since its birth as a New Town. The town’s successful Enterprise Zone which includes the Harlow Innovation Park continues to grow with new state of the art workspaces being created to maximise the benefits of its unique location and opportunities.

The Systems Business Partner will be responsible for the continuous and smooth running of the Financial Management System (FMS) (and any other ancillary systems), looking to continuously improve them to ensure best service is provided at all times. The post-holder will lead on the development and maintenance of the FMS, ensuring that the other members of the finance team can provide financial data analysis to decision-makers in services and can provide support to non-financial services to become more confident around managing their budgets.

The role responsibilities entail leading on all aspects of developing, managing and maintaining the Council’s Corporate financial system to deliver smooth and reliable operation, system development and upgrade, timely, complete and accurate data input to ensure that there are consistently available, reliable, dynamic and efficient outputs that meet the needs of services and corporate users. This role plays a key part in enabling the provision of a wide array of financial information to ensure that management of the Council’s financial resources is maintained to the highest standard across the Council and accessible to users. Services are delivered through an advisory led, business partnering model designed to support service managers in achieving their service goals within agreed finance policies. Active finance system development and reporting is required to enable effective service support.

Collaborative working with other members of the Finance Team the ICT service and Service Managers is essential to ensure that issues are identified, solutions agreed, developed and implemented, liaising with Finance Leaders as required, achieving service standards, goals and balance of risks.

To be successful in the role you should either be a CCAB qualified accountant or a part qualified CCAB accountant and be actively studying towards the fully qualification, with detailed knowledge and experience obtained within a similar role, preferably within the public sector or local government, experience of staff management and a demonstrable record of completed projects within a time pressured environment is essential.

This will be an exciting and challenging role working in a dynamic and supportive team which will provide exceptional opportunities for the right candidate to apply their initiative, to design systems’ improvements and to be involved in a highly-regarded central function of the Council.

We are a modern, forward thinking organisation offering agile working styles to give ultimate flexibility and work-life balance. We offer an attractive remuneration package including generous annual leave, professional fees and career average revalued (CARE) pension scheme.

Further information or for an informal discussion about this role please contact Mathew Crosby (Deputy S151) on 01279 446225 or email to mathew.crosby@harlow.gov.uk

Closing date Thursday 4 November 2021. Initial interviews to be held in person on either Thursday 18 or Friday 19 November 2021. Successful candidates may need to attend a second interview on either Thursday 25 or Friday 26 November 2021.