CIPFA Public Finance Live 2026: panel session highlights and key themes

📍 London | The ICC, Olympia | 🗓️ 15 June

Opening Panel: Public Trust, Devolution and the Political Mood

🎙️ Luke Tryl | More in Common

Luke Tryl of More in Common opened by describing the public mood as grim, using words like “broken” and “shambolic” to capture a widespread sense that something in the system itself is not working. He pointed to a lack of trust, both between people and between the public and politics, alongside a deeper material and political exhaustion. Rising threat perception is compounding this, including a sense that the US can no longer be relied on as a security guarantor, and a broader lack of agency as the UK struggles to achieve what it wants on the international stage. Against this backdrop, he argued that Andy Burnham needs to set out clearly what kind of country he wants to build, as no politician can govern without a long-term vision. 

🎙️ Claire Ainsley | Progressive Policy Institute

Claire Ainsley framed Burnham’s position as one of significant opportunity but equally significant risk, floating the idea of Burnham’s position being a form of “business-friendly socialism” as a possible direction. She saw devolution and welfare reform as areas where people feel change is genuinely achievable, while public control of utilities was exciting but risky territory. Drawing a comparison with Joe Biden, she noted that his administration delivered strong growth, but inflation was so high that the achievement never landed politically — not because the underlying policy was wrong, but because economic growth has to be felt in people’s everyday lives and communities to count. Her central message was that Burnham needs to start communicating his offer, and needs to do so quickly: unless people feel they have a stake in society, they will keep feeling disenfranchised and drift toward alternatives such as Reform or the Greens, because the public feels it “cannot get much worse.”

🎙️ Tony Travers | London School of Economics

Tony Travers focused on the practical difficulty of governing. Even “easy” things are hard to deliver, he argued, and genuinely difficult decisions are harder still. He raised a question that ran through much of the day: Does devolving more power weaken or strengthen the central government’s hand relative to Whitehall departments? His own view was that it would weaken it, and he described No.10 as operating in something of a “Darlington bubble.” He floated the idea of regional mayors sitting in the House of Lords, and raised an open question over whether central government would ever devolve accountability and management of the NHS to the regions. On the prospect of a Land Value Tax, he urged caution: any revaluation applied retrospectively makes people very nervous, and Margaret Thatcher’s experience with the poll tax is a cautionary tale.

Beyond Capacity: Confronting the New Realities of Public Service Demand

🎙️ Kim Wright | Brent Council

Kim Wright, from Brent Council, set out the scale of pressure facing local authorities. Brent alone has around 10,000 residents in temporary accommodation, costing roughly £100,000 a day, with costs around £5.5m a day across London as a whole. People are waiting too long for housing and other services, and the local government has had to stop doing large amounts of work altogether: spending has fallen by around £200m since 2010, and the workforce has roughly halved. She argued the sector needs a “rewiring” from the centre, and made the case for prevention in financial terms too: for every £1 invested, roughly £3 is saved. Local Government has a role to play, but it cannot do so with increasingly stripped finances. 

🎙️ John Tizard | Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedford

Dave Finch made the case for a better framework for managing and building prevention into services, rather than treating it as an add-on to existing provision. John Tizard highlighted a stark statistic: 60% of the prison population experienced school exclusion earlier in life. Yet prevention is difficult to prioritise when services such as the police are responding to more than 500 incidents a day. He argued that criminal justice, social justice and human rights all matter, but that without tackling housing and education, crime will keep recurring – services need to be joined up with councils rather than working in silos. On a more practical note, he pointed to AI-driven efficiencies in paperwork that have already freed up the equivalent of 40 officer roles in one example. There are ways to improve, but we need to know what they are. 

🎙️Vic Rayner OBE | National Care Forum

Vic Rayner OBE, of the National Care Forum, described a social care system under severe strain, with around 17,000 people still waiting for assessments or provision from the previous year. She pointed to international examples for inspiration: Ontario’s “nursing homes without walls” model encourages older people into meals and community activity, with Singapore cited as taking a similar approach, while Spain has recently updated its dependency (care-needs) assessment requirements. It is again essential to look at international examples, alongside recognised leaders such as Korea and Japan. 

Asset Readiness for Local Government Reorganisation (LGR)

This session explored the opportunities and risks around council assets as local government reorganisation (LGR) progresses. Reorganisation was seen as a genuine opportunity to look at assets in a new way – maintaining heritage buildings, leisure centres and similar assets matters not just operationally but for how places are shaped and how people identify with an area. A recurring theme was that maps and asset data tend to be seen by councils, not by the public, and that property should be treated as a central, corporate asset: a central team taking this view can unlock investment and add a financial dimension to asset management that many councils currently miss. There was hope that with unitaries, this could be managed more effectively. 

Liabilities attached to housing and property, including condition surveys, need to be properly understood, and a risk was raised that some councils are making property decisions ahead of the strategic mergers driving LGR, without knowing whether those are the right calls. Data quality varies hugely between councils – some still hold postcode data in paper filing cabinets, while others hold full polygon-level geospatial data – and, perhaps counterintuitively, too much data can also become a burden, consuming staff time rather than helping. Town and parish councils were suggested as a useful new “two-tier” strategy, with property devolved to them for local benefit. The panel also encouraged those who were interested to look into “ACES” or the Association of Chief Estates Surveyors and Property Managers in the Public Sector. It is the professional network representing senior property, asset management, and estates leaders, which is relevant to this space. 

Building Capacity: A Community of Practice for Prevention

This session asked a central question: in the face of rising demand, how do services improve outcomes and maximise public value? It referenced CIPFA’s “Understanding Preventive Investment” report, and made the point that prevention outcomes are largely shaped by local decisions – something that matters even more under devolution, in order to get the most out of local areas.

A strong example came from Rhondda Cynon Taf’s Health Determinants Research Collaborative (HDRC), the third-largest in Wales, which faces significant health inequalities. A programme there tracking babies at risk of parental separation returned strong results: 41 of 46 babies remained with, or were returned to, parental care, and the separation rate fell from 33% to 17%, generating benefits for wider partners in social work. The session called for shared language, shared evidence and shared practice across the sector, including agreeing on a common definition of “lived experience,” and referenced the “Make a Change” RTC as a related programme. Peer learning and shared groups – spanning social care, housing and transport – were seen as a way to build a wider map of practice and boost learning exchange, with the CIPFA Preventative Investment Community of Practice (a LinkedIn group) flagged as a resource, alongside examples such as a new prevention unit set up by the Scottish Government.

A recurring tension was funding: money is often allocated locally, but central government funding is limited, and central government can either create dedicated, time-limited prevention funds or ring-fence funding, raising the question of how to manage the restrictions that come with ring-fencing. Responsibility for resolving this was seen as sitting with the centre. The overall message from the session was to sustain the current momentum and interest in prevention as a key area for strategic renewal.

Closing Conversation: Emily Maitlis on Politics and Media

Emily Maitlis closed the day with a wide-ranging conversation on politics and the media. She noted that the shape of a future cabinet remains unclear, and that most MPs elected in 2024 don’t know Andy Burnham well – drawing a comparison to Keir Starmer as more of a “European head of state” figure than a colourful or flashy politician. She raised the sacking of Olly Robbins as a possible turning point where people became increasingly disappointed, and the discussion also touched on the dynamic between Farage and “ Count BinFace”, a rather colourful part of the discussion. 

On her advice on media interviews, she described role-playing scenarios in advance with colleagues, such as an editor, to find an interviewee’s weak points. She recalled a moment of concern during her prominent interview with Prince Andrew, that he might try to claim the moral high ground, and that questions about the allegations against him would be treated as off-limits. Her broader point was that interviewees often try to make the interviewer nervous by attacking their dignity when answering – they “lob stuff” to knock the interviewer off course – so the interviewer must never lose track of the original question. Her advice: answer the question, because the moment you feel you have to defend your own integrity, you’ve lost the exchange. A worthwhile discussion, for any of those who might have a media interview as part of their job.

Key takeaways

Trust and communication: public confidence in politics is low and fragmenting; political leaders (Burnham was the recurring example) need to communicate a clear offer quickly, or risk losing ground to political alternatives.

Demand vs. capacity: housing, care and safeguarding demand is running well ahead of funding and workforce capacity across local government. This funding challenge might be addressed by Burnham in the coming week.

Prevention pays: the figure which I remembered across sessions, was the roughly £3 saved for every £1 invested in prevention, but also that funding models (ring-fencing vs. dedicated funds) remain a barrier to scaling it up.

Devolution is double-edged: more devolution could strengthen local delivery and public trust, but panellists were split on whether it strengthens or weakens central government’s hand, and highlighted specific risks (LVT revaluation, NHS accountability, LGR asset decisions).

Data and asset readiness: LGR is exposing wide gaps in how councils hold and use property and geospatial data, an area needing attention ahead of mergers.