At the last Executive Committee meeting in London a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF). Their intention is to improve governance and service delivery at local level in various areas of the Commonwealth.
The MoU will receive a budget of £4,500,000 (approximately €5.2 million) that will be in place until 2016. It will also help the national policy frameworks for local service delivery, and increase the engagement of local government in regional policy planning and implementation, since this will also be supported by MoU. In addition, CLGF will also benefit from this agreement, as MoU aims to increase CLGF’s research capacity to strengthen CLFG’s policy making and to guarantee more persistent engagement in international policy debates on key issues affecting local government, for example climate change.