These are confirmed speakers at the CfGS 2026 conference, with updates as we get closer to the event
Samantha (Sam) Smith
Sam is a former President of Socitm and now the Director of the Socitm Institute. In that role she leads the delivery of services including Artificial Intelligence, procurement, social value, policy, research, data, learning & development, and benchmarking.
Before joining Socitm Sam spent 27 years in local government IT & Digital Services culminating in Service Director for a shared IT service working across two Councils in the East of England. Managing shared services of different types and sizes has been a feature of her professional life and has given her an incredibly rich view of local government in England. Throughout her career she has been keen to share experiences and collaborate across the public sector. Socitm has given her the opportunity to do this at regional and national levels.
Catherine Howe
Dr Catherine Howe is Chair of CfGS Board of Trustees and Chief Executive of Dorset Council. She is an expert in digital innovation, focusing on the areas of digital democracy, systems practice and digital transformation. Her current area of focus is public service reform and she writes and comments on that very many moving parts of this on her website as well as writing in other spaces. She has a background which connects together technology, community and social change and has worked across a number of different sectors including education, not for profit and the technology industry. She has worked with new collaborative technologies and social networking tools for over 15 years. Her research interests cover digital civic space, citizenship and systems thinking and she is the Chair of the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny.
Tabitha Baker
Dr Tabitha Baker holds a PhD in Political Psychology and is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Society at Bournemouth University.
As a social science researcher specialising in socio-political research, her work explores the dynamics of identity, belonging, and political division in contemporary Britain.
She focuses on group identities across multiple territorial and political scales, examining how they are formed, mobilised, and contested within frameworks of national identity and nationalism, as well as within regions at a local scale.
Hamida Ali
Hamida has over 20 years’ experience of addressing equality and diversity in public sector organisations, including local and regional government, the criminal justice system, public service broadcasting and the trade union movement. Hamida served as a councillor for Woodside ward in the London Borough of Croydon from 2014–2022. In October 2020, Hamida was elected as Leader of the Council and was responsible for steering the council through a period of significant turbulence prompted by serious financial and governance problems. Prior to that, Hamida served as Cabinet Member for Safer Croydon and Communities from 2016–2020, leading on community safety, community and voluntary sector relations, and equality and diversity. Hamida led a public health approach to tackling serious violence, including domestic violence and knife crime. Since standing down as a councillor, Hamida has joined the team delivering leadership development programmes for councillors in leading roles for the Local Government Association.
Claire Ward
Claire Ward is a Partner at Anthony Collins Solicitors LLP, specialising in local government law. Claire spent 20 years in local government working in Cumbria County Council and then Herefordshire Council, as the Council’s Monitoring Officer and Deputy Chief Executive.
She now advises local authorities on all aspects of governance and decision-making. Claire has extensive experience across strategic, unitary, county, district, town and parish councils enabling her to guide authorities nationwide on effective governance practices.
Claire has advised on Local Government Reorganisation and assisted Council’s in all parts of the process.
Dawn Plimmer
Dawn is interim CEO at Collaborate. She is currently involved in developing Collaborate’s approach to supporting places with Local Government Reorganisation, with an emphasis on creating the culture and leadership needed to ‘end well to start well.’CIC, a consultancy that helps people, organisations and places work together to tackle complex social challenges. She oversees Collaborate’s work on funding and commissioning, learning and evaluation as well as a number of projects with place-based partnerships. Recently, she led work helping Wigan Council review the Wigan Deal and develop a new collaborative whole-place strategy, and worked with Involve to provide external scrutiny of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s development of the Grenfell Support programme, which has included a focus on embedding a restorative approach to scrutiny. Dawn has played a key role in developing Human Learning Systems as an alternative approach to public management which aims to enable more relational, adaptive and collaborative public services. Her background is in grantmaking, with a focus on enabling more person-centred, collaborative and learning-focused approaches.
Dave McKenna
Dave is a dedicated scrutiny practitioner with ten years experience as manager of Swansea Councils scrutiny team. Since 2017 Dave has been based in West Sussex working as an independent consultant, providing training and support sessions for scrutiny councillors across more than 30 different councils across England and Wales. He has also hosted workshops at Centre for Governance and Scrutiny and Association of Democratic Services Officers annual conferences. As a Tpas associate Dave also provides training, support and research for tenant scrutineers. Dave has been BRIEF trained in solution focussed techniques and has expertise in public governance; particularly local government scrutiny, partnership working and public participation. He has a PhD in local politics and is an associate of the Institute of Local Government Studies, working as a researcher on projects such as the 21st Century Public Servant. Dave is a longstanding volunteer organiser for the Notwestminster local democracy conferences.
Charlotte Eisenhart
Charlotte Eisenhart is Chief Executive at the Association of Democratic Services Officers. Her previous roles include being Head of Member Services at the National Association of Local Councils, Head of Engagement at The RSA, and Adviser at the Local Government Association.
Throughout her career she has been passionate about supporting people’s efforts to make change in their communities, whether through leadership development programmes for councillors, national initiatives for parish councils, or engaging people in social change work.
She is also a trustee at the perinatal mental health charity PANDAS.
All news