Summary

We are the public body that looks after England`s historic environment. We champion historic places, helping people understand, value and care for them.

We are currently seeking a focused individual to join our finance team as a Project Accountant to help with financial management and reporting of the organisation.

This will be particularly focused around acting as a project accountant and finance lead for a number of significant and high profile projects, ensuring that the project boards have a good understanding of their financial position and helping them to manage the projects to a good outcome

What you will be doing:

You will act as senior finance lead for a number of complex and high- profile projects, including interacting with very senior stakeholders. You will be the manager for the actual spend on multiple high value projects, totalling a significant portion of HE’s total annual budget, analysing variances to accurately explain to both the project team and external funders how the project is progressing

You will be able to robustly defend your position as part of a team of strong personalities and competing agendas and priorities in a pressurised environment, managing the forecasting of future spend, to ensure that project stays within budget or that correcting actions can be taken in a timely manner, despite strong pressures from other team members to accept inflationary pressures or permit scope creep.

The role is responsible for the development of detailed business cases to secure significant amounts of additional funding for new and existing projects, both internal and external. You will account for large and complex capital projects to ensure spend is appropriately capitalised, managing accruals and prepayments at year end so the project is reflected appropriately in the year end accounts

You will develop options and “what if” scenarios to help the project team make optimal decisions for the organisation, prepare reports for project boards, which will often include very senior people and act as the voice of finance on the project, and ensure that spend is kept within agreed limits and procurement rules are followed.

You will help develop HE’s spending review pack for DCMS and Treasury, assist in other roles across the FBP team as required, E.G. at year end peaks and as a manager, ensure our legal obligations and the expectations set out in our policies are met, including health & safety, equality & diversity, finance, procurement, information security and managing people

Who we are looking for :

• At least part-qualified CCAB accountant or equivalent

• IT literate and proficient with excel (pivot tables, lookups etc)

• Experience of working on complex and high value / high profile projects (Project Management)

• Experience of reporting to very senior stakeholders, and how do dealt with the communications issues arising from this (communications)

• Experience of working with Variance analysis and Sensitivity Analysis

• Forecasting and Capital Accounting Experience

We are an inclusive employer and believe that flexible working options are for everyone. We want to make sure our working arrangements don’t prevent anyone from joining us because of their personal circumstances. We also want to provide you with the best balance in your home and work life that we can.

We are open to considering options including job sharing, part-time working, compressed hours working and different working locations, including hybrid working. Please visit our jobs pages or contact us to find out more.

Why work for Historic England

We offer a wide benefits package including a competitive pension scheme starting at 26% contributions, a generous 28 days holiday, corporate discounts, free entry into English Heritage sites across the country and development opportunities to ensure you achieve your goals.

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for everyone. Diversity helps us to perform better and attract more people to support our work. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds.

We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates and candidates with disabilities as they are underrepresented within Historic England at this level.

Historic England want all of our candidates to shine in the recruitment process. Please tell us what we can do to make sure you can show us your very best self. You can contact us by email at ResourcingTeam@Historicengland.org.uk or telephone 07763387811 if you have any recruitment queries.

Provisional interview dates - end of June 2023

For a full copy of the JD please click on the link below;

https://historicengland.org.uk/content/job-descriptions-hr/project-accountant-jd/

To ensure a fair and inclusive recruitment process for everyone the use of AI or automated tools is not permitted.