Title: Finance Manager – Estates and Capital Planning
Location: Dunstable LU5
Hybrid: working 3 days a week in the office
Contract: Permanent
We’re looking for a commercially minded analyst with a passion for turning data into meaningful insight to join our Development & Estates Finance team. This is a high-impact role where you’ll help shape investment decisions across our property portfolio, providing the financial modelling, analysis and challenge that enables us to invest smarter and drive greater value.
With exposure to around £400m of Rent and Rates and £500m of capital budgets, you’ll work closely with Finance Business Partners and Property teams to strengthen financial planning, improve cost management and identify opportunities for savings and efficiencies. If you enjoy getting beneath the numbers, solving business problems and using insight to influence decisions, this is an opportunity to make a real impact.
What you'll be doing
- Deliver accurate, commercially focused reporting and insight, analysing performance against budget and forecast, understanding key variances and translating complex financial information into clear recommendations for senior stakeholders.
- Own key Estates and Capital reporting, including Rent, Rates, Insurance, Lease Interest and Depreciation, ensuring assumptions are robust, IFRS16 impacts are understood and longer-term projections are accurately reflected.
- Build strong partnerships across the business and with external providers, to provide constructive challenge, improve financial control and support better decision-making.
- Drive improvements in processes, reporting and efficiency, identifying opportunities to automate and standardise reporting, improve capital cash-flow visibility, strengthen the asset lifecycle process and track delivery of Everyday Efficiency savings.
Why you'll love it here
Bonus potential 20%
Bupa Healthcare
Branded discounts up to 60% off hotel stays with Premier inn and Hub
Up to 10% matched pension
What you'll need
- A qualified accountant (CIMA, ACCA or ACA), with a degree-level education or equivalent relevant experience.
- Strong financial modelling and advanced Excel skills, with the ability to interpret large and complex data sets and turn them into clear, meaningful commercial insights.
- Experience of budgeting, forecasting and variance analysis, ideally gained within a multi-site, property, estates or similarly complex commercial environment.
- A good understanding of investment and accounting principles, with experience using financial analysis to evaluate opportunities and support business decisions.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the confidence to build strong relationships, influence decisions and constructively challenge.
Skills Required
- Qualified accountant with CIMA, ACCA, or ACA qualification
- Degree-level education or equivalent relevant experience
- Strong financial modelling skills
- Advanced Microsoft Excel skills
- Ability to interpret large and complex data sets and produce meaningful commercial insights
- Experience with budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis
- Understanding of investment and accounting principles
- Experience using financial analysis to evaluate opportunities and support business decisions
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
- Experience in a multi-site, property, estates, or similarly complex commercial environment
What We Do
Whitbread is a UK hospitality company that owns and operates Premier Inn, the country’s largest hotel brand, alongside restaurant brands including Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Bar + Block, Cookhouse and Pub, and Table Table. Its business spans more than 1,200 hotels and restaurants across the UK, with a growing hotel presence in Germany and the Middle East, serving millions of guests through recognizable hospitality brands.
