Yolk Recruitment Ltd
Executive Director of Finance and Transformation
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The Valleys to Coast Group
The Valleys to Coast Group is at an exciting and pivotal stage in its development, with ambitious plans for growth, investment and organisation-wide transformation.
Rooted in Bridgend but expanding its footprint along the South Wales M4 corridor, the Group goes beyond providing housing - it invests in places and delivers services that help people feel safe, supported and proud of where they live.
About the Role
The organisation is seeking an exceptional Executive Director of Finance & Transformation to play a central role in shaping and delivering its next phase. This is a broad and influential Executive position, combining strategic financial leadership with organisation-wide transformation and extending well beyond the traditional Finance Director remit.
Working closely with the Group Chief Executive, Executive Team and Board, you will provide the financial stewardship, commercial insight and constructive challenge required to enable ambitious growth while maintaining financial sustainability, resilience and effective governance.
You will join an organisation investing in its future, exploring new opportunities for growth and development, and seeking to harness technology, automation and emerging AI capabilities to improve services, increase efficiency and strengthen organisational performance.
Strategic Priorities and Opportunity
The Valleys to Coast Group has significant ambitions for growth and development, including increased activity across mixed-tenure development and a strengthened approach to funding and investment.
Operating as a group with a shared purpose, each part of the organisation plays a distinct role - bringing development, maintenance and long-term responsibility into one coordinated system, working together to create the conditions for people, families and communities to move forward with confidence and opportunity.
As Executive Director of Finance & Transformation, you will be at the heart of strategic decision-making, balancing the opportunities and risks associated with:
- Growth and development
- Funding and access to finance
- Mixed-tenure development
- Cash and liquidity
- On-lending and subsidiary activity
- Operating margins and financial sustainability
- Investment and return on investment
- Risk appetite and effective governance
You will act as a trusted strategic adviser to the Executive Team and Board, providing robust financial and commercial challenge while remaining focused on enabling the organisation to achieve its ambitions. You will help shape decisions around where to invest, where to prioritise and where to exercise caution, ensuring the Group builds the financial capacity required for sustainable growth.
Strategic Financial Leadership
You will provide strategic leadership across Finance and Treasury, safeguarding the Group's financial position and long-term resilience.
Your remit will include leading the development and delivery of the long-term Financial Strategy, Treasury Management Policy and Investment Strategy, alongside accountability for the 30-year business plan, annual budgets, rolling business planning and value-for-money frameworks.
Bringing strong commercial and financial acumen, you will ensure that decisions around growth, investment and risk are appropriately balanced. Experience of development, funding and mixed-tenure models will be particularly valuable, alongside a track record of securing and negotiating significant funding and treasury facilities.
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You will also provide strategic assurance across financial reporting, internal controls, risk management, governance and regulatory compliance, ensuring the organisation has the financial capacity and resilience to deliver its ambitions.
Organisation-Wide Transformation
Alongside your financial leadership, you will provide strategic direction for the Group's organisation-wide transformation agenda, ensuring change is coordinated, strategically aligned and focused on measurable outcomes.
You will work across:
- Finance and corporate services
- Technology, digital and IT
- People and culture
- Projects and transformation
- Customer experience
- Operational services
The Group has already invested significantly in modernising its systems and services. Your role will be to maximise the value of that investment, strengthen automation and ensure transformation is joined up across the organisation rather than delivered in isolation.
A key priority will be improving efficiency and operating margins through a disciplined 'invest to save' approach, with a clear focus on benefits realisation, delivery and accountability. You will ensure investment translates into tangible, sustainable improvements and measurable organisational value.
Technology, Automation and AI
The Valleys to Coast Group is exploring the potential of technology, automation and AI to support its future operating model.
You do not need to be an AI specialist, but you will be curious, forward-thinking and commercially minded, with the ability to recognise how technology can improve service delivery, enhance efficiency and create sustainable value.
You will ensure the organisation maximises the value of its existing systems and investments, while identifying where future investment can deliver the greatest strategic impact.
The Executive Team
The Valleys to Coast Group has fostered an Executive culture built on openness, trust and constructive challenge, where colleagues are encouraged to engage in honest and robust debate while maintaining strong professional relationships and a shared commitment to organisational success.
The successful candidate will therefore be:
- Emotionally intelligent and self-aware
- An exceptional relationship builder and influencer
- Comfortable providing constructive challenge
- A skilled negotiator
- Collaborative and collegiate in approach
- Confident and assured without being ego-driven
- Comfortable navigating difficult conversations positively
- Able to operate effectively amid ambiguity and competing priorities
- Resilient, adaptable and comfortable leading through change
Shaping the Future
This is an opportunity for an ambitious and commercially minded leader who thrives in a complex and evolving environment.
The Group has significant ambitions, but these must be delivered within finite resources. You will play a critical role in helping the organisation navigate competing priorities and make informed decisions about where to invest, where to prioritise and where to pause.
As the organisation continues to grow and evolve, there will be times when consolidation, reprioritisation or difficult decisions are required. You will need to be comfortable operating in an environment where the strategic destination is clear, but the route may change in response to circumstances and emerging opportunities.
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You will also provide strategic oversight of emerging opportunities around development and subsidiary arrangements, ensuring the Board has the financial assurance, commercial insight and constructive challenge required to understand both the opportunities and associated risks.
This is a significant opportunity to shape the future direction of the Valleys to Coast Group, combining financial stewardship, commercial leadership and transformational thinking to support sustainable growth and long-term organisational success.
About You
We are looking for a commercially minded senior finance professional who can combine financial stewardship with transformation leadership. You will bring:
- A professional accountancy qualification - ACA, ACCA, CIMA or CIPFA - with active membership of a CCAB professional body
- Significant strategic leadership experience at Director or Executive level within a housing association, construction or development sectors, or in an organisation with demonstrable exposure to, and a strong understanding of, the social housing sector
- A strong track record of leading significant organisational change, transformation and complex restructuring
- Experience working alongside Boards and Committees, with a strong understanding of governance, internal controls and risk
- Experience negotiating, securing and/or restructuring substantial corporate funding and treasury facilities
- Strong knowledge of financial reporting, budgeting, financial sustainability and performance management
- A highly commercial and entrepreneurial mindset, with a focus on value, efficiency and organisational sustainability
- The strategic capability to translate high-level ambition into clear operational action
- The gravitas and communication skills to influence at Executive and Board level
- Strong negotiation, analytical and risk assessment skills
Benefits
- Hybrid and flexible working: offering a 9 day fortnight
- Annual leave: 25 days increasing by 1 day for every completed year up to a maximum of 5 days plus bank holidays
- Competitive Pension: SHPs - Valleys to Coast contribute 3% more than you each month (minimum contribution where you pay 4%, Valleys to Coast pay 7%; maximum contribution where you pay 6%, Valleys to Coast pay 9%)
- Recognition events and thousands of retail discounts
- Health care cash plan to help you pay for essential health bills, as well as providing you with 24-hour access to GP advice, counselling and more.
How to Apply
Yolk Recruitment is proud to be supporting the Valleys to Coast Group as its Executive Search Partner on this appointment.
To apply, please submit your up-to-date CV along with a Supporting Statement of no more than two pages, outlining how your experience and skills meet the criteria set out in the person specification.
If you are interested in exploring this opportunity and would like a confidential conversation about the role and to access the full candidate pack, please contact Hannah Welfoot at Yolk Recruitment.
Closing Date: 23:59 Wednesday, 12th August 2026
First Stage Interviews: Wednesday, 26th August 2026
Second Stage Interviews: Tuesday, 8th September 2026
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