Who are we?

First Rail is one of the most experienced rail operators in the UK, with more than 770,000 passenger journeys daily last year across our Department for Transport contracted operations and open access routes.

We operate two major UK train operating companies - Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway (GWR), and two open access passenger rail services, Hull Trains and Lumo. We are also 'shadow operator' on the HS2 programme and operate the London Trams service on behalf of Transport for London.

Our First Rail head office is home to specialist teams that provide expert support across the Engineering, Finance, Property, Operations, Procurement, IT, and Human Resources functions of the rail division. First Rail Holdings is part of FirstGroup, the largest rail operator in the UK and second largest bus operator in the UK outside London.  FirstGroup operates services throughout the UK and Ireland, with over 30,000 employees providing services that make travel smoother and life easier.  FirstGroup works hard to reduce its impact on the environment, introducing cleaner and more environmentally responsible methods of transport

About the job

The Senior FP&A Lead is integral to supporting the Head of Financial Planning to deliver on our mission by providing the co-ordination of financial planning and analysis activities across the range of entities in the First Rail along with the interface with the Group Finance team and is responsible for ensuring that the actual performance of the entities is well understood by the First Rail Management and Group Finance teams. Senior FP&A Lead will identify issues and opportunities for improvement, ensuring that robust and reliable forecasts and budgets are in place for the First Rail entities and that the onward distribution of these forecasts to the various stakeholders (DfT, Group, Entity Boards) by entity finance teams is effective and timely. With the support of the entity Finance Directors, coaching the entity finance teams to ensure high quality consistent and reliable reporting of actuals and forecasts.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Working with First Rail Entities Finance teams to maximise the contribution from Rail Division to Group driving Open Access, Rail Services, Rail Contracts & TOC EBIT and EBITDA.

• Drives insight and commercial challenge into the performance of the business, challenging and holding the business accountable for its performance and management of risk exposure for operational areas or programmes.

• Leads the Consolidation of Rail Division entities periodic financial results and financial plans - forecast/budget at multi-year plans, ensuring on-time delivery to Group Finance timetable.

• Supporting the Director and Head of Financial Planning & Finance & Strategic Development in challenging the First Rail entities performance to ensure the First Rail Division finance strategy is delivered and the clear and effective communication of risks & opportunities.

• Provides interpretation and guidance in relation to financial analysis, consolidated budgets and forecasts to enable business areas to make key decisions and achieve targets and mitigate risks

• Maximises financial and business performance (including efficiencies delivery) through high quality analysis of financial plans, management information and performance data

• Lead the development and ongoing maintenance/utilisation of SAP BPC for financial planning activities across First Rail to ensure effect delivery of forecast, Annual Business Plans and Budgets to the relevant stakeholders

• Drive the finance agenda on data analytic tools (current and new) for better more efficient processes for gaining insight to drive business decisions. Leads continuous improvement, including projects to raise quality in standards, systems and people, including benchmarking where appropriate.

• Ownership of the intercompany reconciliation process and co-ordinating reporting of PO status across affiliate contracts.

• Ownership of IFRS16 adoption in entities under revised FRS 102 reporting liaising with Group on new requirements and process implementation.

• Liaising with external auditors, co-ordinating requests and managing delivery of the statutory accounts in a timely manner for the central rail entities.

As a minimum you will need to have:

Qualifications and memberships

•    Educated to degree standard or equivalent 
•    Qualified accountant (i.e. CIMA/ ACA /ACCA) or equivalent

Job specific knowledge and skills

•    Variance and financial/budgetary analysis
•    Forecasting
•    Systems and software
•    Cost accounting
•    Continuous improvement 
•    Business case analysis, development and assurance
•    Risk and control
•    Professional accounting principles and standards
•    Management reporting and external reporting and ad-hoc communication
•    Commercial acumen