Early Years and Childcare Finance and Business Service Manager

Do you have a talent for leading complex services that make a real difference to children and families?

Are you keen to use your knowledge of early years, childcare funding and statutory duties to shape high-quality, inclusive provision across the city?

Do you enjoy working collaboratively with schools, childcare providers, council colleagues and partners to solve problems and improve access for families?

Can you bring strong financial, analytical and project management skills to a role with significant social value?

Brighton & Hove City Council is looking for an experienced and values-led Early Years and Childcare Finance and Business Service Manager to provide strategic leadership across early years and childcare services. This is an important senior role within Families, Children and Wellbeing, helping to make sure children and families across the city can access high-quality, inclusive and sustainable childcare.

You will lead key areas of statutory delivery, including the early years free entitlement for eligible children from nine months to four years old, childcare sufficiency, early years funding, out of school childcare and the Holiday Activities and Food programme. You will also play a central role in leading projects related to early years and childcare, developing local policy, managing complex budgets and supporting the delivery of capital and revenue programmes that strengthen childcare provision across Brighton & Hove.

Contract type: This role is permanent.

Provisonal date of interviews - w/c 9th November

There is full information about the role below and attached but, if you would like an informal discussion, please contact Jo Templeman Head of Best Start on 07795336051 or email jo.templeman@brighton-hove.gov.uk

About the role

In this role, you will provide strategic leadership for early years and childcare across Brighton & Hove, making sure the council meets its statutory duties and that children and families can access high-quality, inclusive and sustainable childcare. Your work will include leading delivery of the early years free entitlement from nine months to four years old, childcare sufficiency, funding arrangements, out of school childcare and the Holiday Activities and Food programme.

Day to day, you will work with schools, private, voluntary and independent childcare providers, finance colleagues, programme managers and wider partners to solve problems, strengthen provision and support improvement across the city. You will lead financial planning and business systems for early years funding, including the local early years funding formula, budget management, data collection, provider payments, compliance and assurance processes. You will also use data, consultation and local intelligence to understand need, identify gaps, support childcare sustainability and improve take-up of entitlements, particularly for children and families who may face barriers to accessing childcare.

You will need to bring significant management experience in children’s services, early years, childcare, education or a related field, alongside strong knowledge of childcare legislation, statutory guidance, early years funding and local and national policy. The role will suit someone who can think strategically, manage complex budgets, lead service reviews and projects, and turn detailed information into clear advice, decisions and action. You will also need strong relationship-building, negotiation and problem-solving skills, with the confidence to influence change across a wide range of internal and external partners.

This is also an opportunity to join a service with a strong focus on development, partnership and improvement. You will be involved in important service developments linked to early years, childcare sufficiency, inclusion, SEND access, wraparound childcare, HAF and the wider Best Start approach. The role offers the chance to work across strategic policy, finance, delivery and partnership systems, while supporting and developing staff and contributing to work that has direct social value for children, families and communities across Brighton & Hove.

Encouraging a diverse workforce
Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.

Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).

Why work for us?
As a council, we want to:
• be connected
• be confident
• be innovative and creative
• be diverse and inclusive
• be healthy and psychologically safe
For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.

How to apply
Please read our Apply for a job at the council pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.

As part of your application, you will need to provide your education and career history and answer some application/shortlisting questions. Your answers to the application/shortlisting questions are the most important part of your application as they will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our Shortlisting questions guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.

AI advice for candidates
We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.

We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.

All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process. Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.

Additional information
Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.

We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.

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