Head of Finance and Operations

Job Title - Head of Finance and Operations

Contract - Permanent

Hours - Full time, 35 hours per week (However, we will consider part-time at 28 hours per week)

Salary - £48,000 - £58,000 per annum

Location - London office, Coram Campus, 41 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ

About Coram

Coram is the UK’s oldest children’s charity founded by Thomas Coram in London helping vulnerable children and young people since 1739. Today, the Coram group helps more than one million children, young people, families and professionals every year by providing access to the skills and opportunities they need to thrive.

One of the nine members of the Coram group, Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) is the UK’s specialist centre for children’s rights in education, immigration, community care and family law, and provides significant international legal systems consultancy. The centre is located on the Coram Campus in central London with bases in Colchester and Leeds. We champion access to justice through information and advice, legal practice and representation, policy and strategic litigation. Our Legal Practice Unit provides advice and representation primarily under legal aid contract. Our Policy and Practice Change team promotes practice change through training and capacity building to professionals and secures systems change through research, policy and advocacy.

About the role

This senior role will provide financial and operational leadership and management for CCLC, particularly focussed on the Legal Practice Unit and the Policy and Practice Change team. Through systematic and efficient management, the post holder will play a pivotal role in CCLC’s financial and operational sustainability.

The role will oversee the smooth running of the London and Colchester offices through oversight and line management of finance, operations and administrative staff. The post holder will support the Managing Director of Legal Practice and Children's Rights and department heads in the successful running of our services. Where appropriate they will deputise for the Managing Director on financial, operational and compliance matters.

Managing a small finance team, the role will hold primary responsibility for specialist financial functions within CCLC, particularly legal aid billing. The role will act as a key point of contact for a range of internal and external stakeholders including Coram’s central finance team who focus on grant fund management and overall accounting for CCLC.

The role would suit a highly organised and efficient business support professional with experience of financial management within the legal or charity sector. In particular, candidates with experience of legal billing and more specifically, civil legal aid billing, are welcomed. However, we recognise that this is a highly specialised and niche field. As such, candidates with broad operational and financial management experience but a strong aptitude for processing large amounts of data, developing and managing spreadsheets and improving organisational systems will be considered.

This is a largely office-based role in order to fully provide support to the finance and operations team. However, some remote / hybrid working may be possible depending the experience of the candidate after the initial settling in period (to be negotiated with the successful candidate).The finance team are split between the London and Colchester offices and the post holder should expect some travel.

Whilst this is a full-time position, we will consider requests for part-time working and we will endeavour to offer some flexibility with days and hours to be agreed.

To apply for this role, please click on the 'apply now' button below to complete the application.

Closing date: Monday 6th January 2024 23.59pm (Please note, we reserve the right to close this advertisement early if we receive a suitable amount of high quality applicants to take forward to interview prior to the closing date)

Test and Interview date: TBC

Coram is an equal opportunities employer and we believe a diverse workforce enables us to improve the services to the children and families we help. We are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from all sections of the community we seek to support. This includes those from global majority ethnic backgrounds, those that identify as LGBQT+, those with disabilities, those with lived experience of care, those with neuro-diversity, and those from other groups who are underrepresented at Coram.

If applicants feel comfortable, we would encourage them to draw on lived experience as well as professional experience in their personal statement as part of their application.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and where appropriate will require the successful applicant to undertake a check from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Registered Charity No. 312278.