South Gloucestershire Council
Funding and Sustainability Officer - Early Years Team
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How You'll Make a Difference
The Early Years Team is part of the Education, Learning and Skills division within the Department for People. The team is responsible for the council's legal duties relating to education, including the sufficiency of early year’s places.
By joining the Early Years Team, you will play an important role in ensuring that children and families can access the provision and support they need. Your work will help improve access to early entitlement funding and ensure sufficient early years and childcare places are available, contributing to positive outcomes for children and young people across South Gloucestershire.
What You Will Be Doing
It will be your responsibility to:
- Develop and implement all financial processes to support the Early Years team, including purchases, budget tracking, ordering and setting up new suppliers and undertaking their checks.
- Assist the Early Years Operations Manager in collating, processing, manipulating, analysing and presenting data and financial information to support service delivery and planning.
- Be responsible for all payments to early years providers and the tracking of spend, including Early Years Pupil Premium, Disability Access Fund and Early Years Inclusion Support Fund.
- Review and improve financial processes by liaising with other departments and teams within the council and beyond to access, process and present data in support of early years initiatives. You will develop systems to automate payment processes, for example through gov.pay.
- Serve as the first point of contact and subject matter expert for parents and providers, providing support, advice, guidance and training and responding to queries from providers via the funding portal. Ensure that providers accessing funding for places are correctly registered and that claims are accurately monitored.
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What We Need From You
- Hold, or be working towards, a relevant professional or technical qualification, such as AAT, NVQ4, or an equivalent relevant qualification in business studies or finance.
- Have worked in a similar service area, such as within a council or financial services, and have a good understanding of the early years sector, financial requirements, local government, and working within statutory frameworks.
- Have well-developed interpersonal and communication skills, to enable you to build relationships and engage successfully with early years providers, parents and other agencies.
- Have experience of working flexibly within a team and across different areas of activity and projects, meeting service standards, targets and deadlines while undertaking information analysis, report production and financial processing.
- Have good literacy and numeracy skills, enabling you to undertake research, present findings in a clear, concise format, and produce accurate reports, data charts and cash flow statements.
- Have excellent knowledge of Excel and the ability to learn and use appropriate specialist in-house software packages.
What You Need To Know
- This role is hybrid, with a mixture of working at our office in Yate and from home.
- Due to the nature of this role, it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained.
- You will be expected to travel throughout the authority and surrounding area so you must have a full, valid driving licence with regular access to a vehicle or have an alternative means of travel.
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Interviews will be held on 18th and 19th August 2026.
How a Career At South Gloucestershire Council Is Different
As part of our benefits package, you will receive:
- Generous annual leave (pro rata)
- Employee wellbeing support
- Access to a range of staff discounts, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities.
We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities. We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives, and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance. We invest in the careers of our people, and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps our people make the greatest long-term difference in their work.
Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.
- We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of.
- We're working with the most vulnerable in our community to help them achieve what they want in life.
- We're investing in our schools to ensure every child and young person in South Gloucestershire achieves their full potential.
We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference.
We’re making a difference, be part of it!
To view the full job description, please click this link: Funding and Sustainability Officer - Early Years Team - Job Description
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