Job Description

As a high calibre finance professional, you'll be used to working with big numbers. Are you ready to use your financial acumen and professional finance business partnering skills to make a difference to the residents of West Sussex?
The Opportunity
Salary: 48,266 - 51,356 per annum, inclusive of 2025/2026 pay award
Working Pattern: Full-time, 37 hours per week
Location: Your office base will be County Hall, Chichester and a typical week will combine homeworking with attendance at the office. This is led by the needs of the service.
Interviews: w/c 13 and 20 October 2025
We're looking for a finance professional who is qualified, with experience to deliver a finance business partnering model, which includes a full range of high quality financial management and accountancy services to clients. You will be responsible for advising and influencing the service to make informed financial decisions, which will have a direct impact on service delivery.
The role will involve working with Adult Social Care budgets. The service is experiencing a period of unprecedented change, where people are living longer resulting in significant growth in demand for social care services. Since we want to make sure West Sussex is a great place to live, the County Council recognises this challenge and has an ambitious improvement programme. At the heart of this is an aim to promote independence by enabling people to stay healthier and live in their homes and communities for longer. Linking financial data with performance information, and with a naturally enquiring mind, you will play an essential role in supporting the service to build a sustainable model for delivering adult social care services.
If you are looking for a diverse and exciting role which offers the opportunity to build collaborative relationships with the service, develop your talent and support senior officers by offering constructive challenge, assurance, recommendations and innovative solutions to add value to their service, then we would like to hear from you.
Applicants who are keen to take the next step in their career are strongly encouraged to apply.
What experience and skills are we looking for?
As well as being a finance professional with experience of delivering a finance business partnering model, you will also need to be a:

• Strategic thinker - someone who can think independently and beyond the surface of a task/ issue to provide a strategic view and added value to the service that you support.
• Relationship manager - someone with the ability to successfully manage key client relationships.
• Critical friend - someone with the ability to challenge, persuade, negotiate and influence the service that you support.
• Relevant chartered status of a professional body (e.g. CIPFA) or equivalent high-level experience of involved practices. Candidates who are actively studying towards chartered qualification are encouraged to apply.
• Relevant degree or equivalent qualification or significant finance experience which demonstrates that level of applied and theoretical knowledge, plus knowledge of the related systems, procedures and policies.
• Significant experience delivering a professional accountancy service and within the role as Finance Business Partner.

For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the attached.
Working for us
As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide an great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:

• an excellent

, employers pension contribution at 19.70% * generous holiday entitlement of 30 days plus bank holidays and opportunity to buy additional leave

• a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
• maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
• volunteering opportunities
• training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
• a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over 1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our

if you are a business looking to offer a discount) * health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans
For a full list this can be found at our
Further information
The reference number for this role is CRS00979.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Laura Hardie at with the relevant reference number above. For issues or queries regarding your application please contact .
To apply, upload your CV and supporting statement (of no more than two A4 pages long) outlining how you meet the key skills and experience above and what you can bring to the role, ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to 3 years referencing and a health check.
Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.
We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our page.
Note for Recruitment Agencies: We prefer to hire people directly, but we do have a supplier list for when we need a helping hand. We'll be in touch directly if we need you!
Available documents

Skills Required