Finance, Procurement & Technology

Finance

There has never been a more exciting and challenging time to join our high performing team. We continue to work with politicians, senior officers across a range of diverse services helping them deliver first class services to the residents, visitors and businesses of Essex in a difficult period for public sector finances in the UK.

Whether it is shaping our response to the growing pressures in adult social care or working with partners to address the housing crisis by delivering the most ambitious new towns programme nationally, our finance professionals are right at the heart of the strategic programmes addressing the biggest issues facing the public sector in the 21^st century.

If you have the passion and vision to help bring about the sort of change needed to keep one of the biggest local authorities in the country at the forefront of high quality public service provision, whilst all the time helping ensure financial resilience, then we would love to meet you and explore what opportunities there are for you to join us.

This expert team leads the financial administration of the authority, ensuring budgetary frameworks, control and statutory requirements are met.

Collectively, our financial administration oversees close to £3 billion per year. We manage income, assessment, invoices, debtors and purchase-to-pay totalling over one million transactions a year. These resources give us the opportunity we’re passionate about to make a profound impact on Essex and the people who call our county home.

We are an accredited employer by all the CCAB bodies and we run a full programme of internal training and development opportunities to ensure everyone has the opportunity to keep their CPD up to date and maintained. We also encourage and facilitate participation in wider policy shaping activities and the advancement of the public finance profession more generally; many of our staff are active on national and regional forums and working groups including the CIPFA regional committee and the CIPFA national student network.

Procurement

Talented and experienced, our Procurement team is the largest in Local Government. We lead on sourcing, contract management and category management, dealing with a supply chain reach that’s one of the largest in the public sector:

• 1,300 suppliers
• 306 contracts
• £5.8b total managed contracts value
• £133m average sourcing project value.

We are the only CIPS accredited local authority in the UK.

Our ambition is to be:

• Recognised by our peers as the best procurement function in the public sector
• Recognised by internal customers as enabling and driving transformational change
• Recognised by partners as driving collaboration across the public sector
• Recognised by the market as an attractive and priority customer.

Technology

Our vision here is important: to deliver high-calibre technology services across the organisation, creating the conditions where employees, citizens and businesses can collaborate, innovate and thrive. The scale of our services and our digital ambitions is impressive. Over the coming years the council will test out new approaches as part of a fundamental rethink on how it serves its 1.4 million residents. As its current organisation strategy sets out, the aim is to become ‘the leading local authority for digital transformation in the country’.

We:

• Manage 186 apps across the organisation
• Managed 22,000 service requests last year
• Have 120 active projects
• Trained 3,700 people last year
• Support 180 sites
• Fixed 32,000 incidents and filtered 250 million spam emails in the past 12 months.

We use world-class suppliers and platforms, fuel organisational change – at pace – through modern, service-based technology solutions, and increase Essex County Council’s leadership presence in national technology initiatives.

Whoever joins the 180-strong team will have an unrivalled opportunity to drive a technological revolution within local government.

Essex Pension Fund

Join the Essex Pension Fund team and you’ll work alongside nearly 60 professionals providing a cradle-to-grave pension arrangement for 180,000 Local Government Pensions Scheme (LGPS) members across 700 organisations, including all Essex Local Authorities & Academy schools. The fund manages assets of £5 billion and provides a range of third-party services from full administration of pensions and payroll for both the uniformed services and teachers pensions schemes within Essex. You can learn more at https://www.essexpensionfund.co.uk/

SELEP

We’re the accountable body for the South Essex Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) – a partnership between business, government and education. Enterprise is at the heart of everything we do. We work closely with central government and its key agencies to attract major investment into the South East and deliver significant economic growth.

SELEP is designed to forge a partnership which properly understands the economic challenges and opportunities of our area, and decide the priorities for investment in roads, buildings and facilities. Learn more here: https://www.southeastlep.com/