CIFA's flagship annual conference
Public Finance Live 2026
The pressures on the public sector have never felt more acute. Funding constraints, rising demand, acute recruitment difficulties, and febrile political environments are combining to create conditions in which sound governance is simultaneously harder to maintain — and more essential than ever.
On Wednesday 15 July, at CIPFA’s flagship annual conference Public Finance Live 2026 at Olympia, London, CfGS Chief Executive Mel Stevens will take part in a panel session exploring exactly this question: The embattled public sector — can good governance hold the line?
About the session
The workshop will bring together practitioners and leaders who have seen what happens when governance fails — and what it takes to prevent it. Chaired by Diana Melville, Governance Advisor at CIPFA, the panel will include Mel Stevens, Chief Executive of the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, Hamida Ali, Head of Learning and Partnerships at The Future Governance Forum, who steered Croydon Council through a period of serious financial and governance turbulence as its elected Leader; Brian Roberts OBE, Former Finance Commissioner at Northamptonshire County Council, who has played a central role in three major government interventions, at Northamptonshire, Liverpool, and Croydon.
The panel will explore the warning signs of governance breakdown, the cultural conditions that allow problems to take root, and what it actually takes to build genuine buy-in to robust governance arrangements — not just among finance professionals, but across whole organisations.
On the panel
Mel Stevens
Hamida Ali
Brian Roberts
Why this matters now
In 2026, IFAC and CIPFA published a new International Framework for Good Governance in the Public Sector. But frameworks only go so far. As the session will examine, the real test of governance lies in culture, relationships, and the ability of professionals to speak plainly — even when the political environment makes that uncomfortable.
The panel will consider questions including: what erodes trust and collaboration within an organisation, how to foster a culture that allows for genuine internal challenge, how public finance professionals navigate the tension between political pressure and professional duty, and what messages public services need to hear — and give — as the sector looks ahead.
Join the conversation
The session takes place in the Transparency Theatre from 13.15–14.15 on Wednesday 15 July, and will include audience Q&A. Delegates can submit and upvote questions through the conference app.
If you are attending Public Finance Live 2026, we hope you’ll join us. It promises to be a frank, timely, and practical conversation — exactly the kind the sector needs.
Public Finance Live 2026 runs on 15–16 July at Olympia, London. Full programme: publicfinancelive.org/programme
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