Directorate Management Accountant

Job overview

At Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust we are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace and pride ourselves on being a supportive team. We are a level 2 accredited One NHS Finance employer and are striving to achieve the Level 3 accreditation. We value our diverse workforce and our finance staff are pivotal in shaping how we address the financial challenges we face going forward.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a dynamic and enthusiastic individual to join our Management Accounting team. This post provides financial advice and management accounting support to a number of surgery service lines within the Trust.

This is an excellent role for an ambitious individual who likes challenges, is self-motivated and wants to use their financial skills to add value and understand how financial resources can be used to support service improvement. The post holder will play a crucial role in ensuring robust and timely management accounting information is available to service lines.

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate commitment to achieve CCAB/CIMA qualification, and be able to demonstrate sufficient relevant experience and achievement of specific competencies.  In return the post offers a breadth of experience and an excellent development opportunity.

The ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate a proven track record in financial management, academic success and with strong personal qualities, including communication skills and team working.

Main duties of the job

The post-holder will be responsible for the production and analysis of monthly financial statements for a number of service lines. They will provide financial advice to general managers and other budget holders that will assist them in the preparation of annual budgets and business plans. The post-holder will also provide ad hoc support to other members of the finance team as required.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Finance Team has over 50 members of staff working in Financial Accounts, Management Accounts and Contracting across the Bedford and Luton Site. It is a great place to work where we support learning and development of our staff. We have an excellent track record of supporting, developing and promoting our staff internally.

We are also proud to hold the following employer accreditations

Level 2 accredited One NHS Finance employer, working towards Level 3

ACCA Approved Employer Programme

CIMA Premier Partner

AAT Employer Scheme

Main responsibilities include:

To produce timely and accurate financial statements for Directorates on a monthly basis.

To support budget holders in managing their financial position such that the Trust is able to achieve its financial targets. This will include providing complex and sensitive information, and will require skills of negotiation and persuasion.

To support negotiations with NHS and external organisations over cost / service issues.

To report Directorates financial position to the Finance Manager (FM) to allow aggregation of the Trust’s financial position on a timely monthly basis.

To assist in the Directorate’s procurement strategy to minimise cost incurred.

To analyse complex financial trends involving many streams of data and forecast financial expenditure, using own initiative to make appropriate assumptions.

To assist senior financial managers & clinicians with financial decision making and risk mitigation through in depth analysis of activity / income.

To prepare annual Directorate budgets for service planning, supporting budget holders through the budget setting process.

To monitor & control budgetary changes throughout the year for relevant Directorates and to propose changes to the control procedures which impact on other team members’ areas.

To provide ad hoc support to FM, Director of Finance & other team members in planning projects that impact across the department and the organisation.

To help co-ordinate work of other staff members in section and to allocate and check the work to junior staff members and to deliver appropriate training to new / junior staff members.

Review of activity and income on a monthly basis, to ensure activity is recorded and reflected on SLR.

Costing for business cases, including for activity, income and expenditure.