Deputy Director of Finance - Health and Safety Executive

Job summary

The Deputy Director of Finance will be an integral part of HSE’s senior leadership group, forging strong relationship with strategy, policy and operational teams across the organisation, ensuring the financial strategy and the rolling three-year financial plan are fully aligned to HSE’s strategy and support the delivery of the Business Plan.

The role will be responsible for the relationship with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) strategic finance teams, HM Treasury (HMT) spending team and others in the centre of Government covering all aspects of strategic finance including leading all aspects of spending reviews and other fiscal events.

Job description

Key Responsibilities and Activities

• Leading and developing the rolling medium-term financial plan, maintaining key assumptions, driving their delivery with Executive Committee and leading HSE’s responses to Spending Reviews and centrally requested financial commissions.
• Leading the production of the Annual Report and Accounts (ARA) to strict deadlines and ensuring maximum contribution across Finance and operational teams. Lead the relationship with National Audit Office (NAO) and project manage HSE’s response to the annual external audit of the ARA.
• Leading the provision of a financial service to the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) ensuring all key performance indicators are delivered and supporting the BSR in the production of key financial statements for the ARA.
• Acting as a catalyst for change to improve financial processes, innovation and value for money, ensuring advances in data, analytics and artificial intelligence are fully utilised for financial reporting. This includes a key role for as the Senior Responsible Officer for the Synergy programme which will replace the Single Operating Platform.
• Developing the activity based costing model to support effective cost recovery for regulatory activities and working across operational, policy and legal colleagues to ensure resilient mechanisms are in place for charging, invoicing and collection of £100m of income.
• Driving robust assessment of organisational performance through business intelligence tools which support the Executive Committee Performance Hub.
• Co-ordinating operational and financial reporting and forecasting across HSE and maintain effective working relationships across DWP, MHCLG, HMT and other funding government departments. The role will be critical in building and maintain trust and credibility with colleagues in these departments.
• Embedding the five finance government standards across HSE and seeking regular assurance that these are working effectively. This will be across both central finance and business partnering to ensuring high standards are maintained.
• Leading on the Division’s workforce plan, learning and development requirements and integrating services to ensure sufficient capability, capacity and resilience to support the strategic direction of HSE.
• Leading HSE’s carbon reducing programme through estate utilisation, travel and supply chain initiatives.

Person specification

It is important that, through your CV and supporting statement, that you provide evidence of the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post.

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate and evidence of competence in the areas of:

• Successfully leading, managing, motivating and developing diverse teams. Ability to deliver through others, providing a clear direction with a persuasive future and driving high performance in line with strategic objectives and Civil Service core values.
• Strong knowledge of finance, Managing Public Money or comparable governance and regulatory framework, and audit requirements as well as extensive experience of overseeing robust corporate governance, including the delivery of Annual Report & Accounts
• Building strong, trust-based relationships with multiple internal and external stakeholders including senior stakeholder such as directors and board level members – demonstrating the communication skills, impact and credibility, judgement and influencing skills to effectively collaborate, challenge assumptions and influence decisions.
• Converting diverse data into coherent, insightful reports and briefings for a variety of audiences to inform decision making to the most senior levels of organisational governance and oversight.
• Experience of leading fiscal events such as annual budgeting, medium-term financial planning and processes with the ability to create a strong and compelling narrative.
• Highly literate with strong analytical skills leading to the ability to understand causal factors / financial drivers that create deviations from delivery plans and supporting budgets/forecasts.
• Able to lead change and transformation, identifying opportunities to improve and innovate and lead the design, delivery and implementation of new ways of working.

Essential Qualification:

Professional accountancy qualification such as;

• Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
• Consultancy Committee of Accountancy Bodies (CCAB)
• Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)
• Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA)
• Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions
• Managing a Quality Service
• Changing and Improving

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Health and Safety Executive contributes

£24,914 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career within the Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Servant, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

Contract

This role is being offered on a permanent basis.

Salary

This is an SCS Pay Band 1 role. The successful candidate should expect to earn £86,000 – £117,800 per annum.

Existing Civil Servants will be appointed in line with the Civil Service pay rules.

Pensions

Your pension is a valuable part of your total reward package.

A competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension; where your contributions come out of your salary before any tax is taken; and where your pension will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire.

Visit www.civilservicepensions.org.uk for more details.

Generous leave allowance

Generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers.

Childcare benefits

The Government has introduced the Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) scheme. Working parents can open an online childcare account and for every £8 they pay in, the government adds £2, up to a maximum of £2000 a year for each child or £4000 for a disabled child. Parents then use the funds to pay a registered childcare. Existing employees may be able to continue to claim childcare vouchers, so please check how the policy would work for you here.

• Onsite facilities
• Opportunity to use onsite facilities including fitness centres and staff canteen (where applicable)
• Sick Pay

Occupational Sick pay.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Application Process

Your online application via CS Jobs should be completed no later than 23:55 pm on Monday 28th September 2026 . You will need to complete the online application process, outlined below:

1. A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years .

2. A Statement of Suitability (max 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the criteria in the person specification.

Failure to complete both sections of the online application form (CV and Statement of Suitability) will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification.

As part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to As part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the particular characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say’. See the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for more information.

If you are successful at the application stage, you will be invited to attend a panel interview, in order to have a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence in relation to the criteria set out in the Person Specification. We will be assessing against the following Success Profiles at interview: Experience and Behaviours.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview.

You may also have the opportunity to speak with David Murray prior to the final interview to learn more about the role and organisation. Please note this is not part of the formal assessment process.

Candidates may be asked to complete a presentation as part of the interview process, you will be given the subject in advance. Full details of the assessment process will be made available to shortlisted candidates.

Interviews for this role will be held face to face at HSE, Redgrave Court, Bootle, Liverpool.

If we receive applications from more suitable candidates than we have vacancies for at this time, we may hold suitable applicants on a reserve list for 12 months, and future vacancies in the Civil Service requiring the same skills and experience could be offered to candidates on the reserve list without the need for a new competition.

Should you encounter any issues with your online application please get in touch with us via:

scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

For further information about the role and the selection process please review the attached candidate information pack.

Indicative Timeline

We will try and offer as much flexibility as we can, but it may not be possible to offer alternative dates for interviews. You are therefore asked to note the below timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process, in order to meet the dates given. Please note that these dates may be subject to change.

The anticipated timetable is as follows:

• Advert Close Date Monday 28th September 2026 23:55
• Shortlist Week commencing 5 th October 2026
• Int