"Cityscapes 2002" Global Convention on Agenda for Urban Infrastructure Reforms
October 21-22, 2002, New Delhi

Address by Mr Len Duvall OBE, Chair of CLGF

Hon'ble Minister, Mayors, councillors and colleagues..

I am delighted to be in India and to have the opportunity to launch the Good Practice Scheme with colleagues from the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation and from the All India Council of Mayors, and the All India Institute of Local Self Government.

The Good Practice Scheme is about building local government partnerships and sharing good practice to help strengthen local government. We believe that through partnerships, councils can tackle common problems and can learn from, and support each other through practical help around a specific issue.

The Scheme was set up in 1998 to help local government practitioners from across the Commonwealth to share experiences and good practice and to pool those resources by working together on practical projects to address poverty and deliver practical outputs for the community. We aim to draw on the skills and experience of both partners to find sustainable solutions to local problems, although the results will often have an impact for other council facing similar problems.

The Scheme is funded by the UK Department for International Development and will fund partnership projects which strengthen governance and support decentralisation in India. The Scheme can pay for practitioner exchange visits, work shadowing, piloting new initiatives and related activities. It is an excellent opportunity to build strong and meaningful networks across the Commonwealth.

My own local council, the London Borough of Greenwich was involved in phase 1 of the Scheme and together with partners in Tema, Ghana, we cooperated on a financial management and revenue collection project. Our objective was to work together to develop an action plan which should result in rises in collected revenue in Tema, and the plan is currently being implemented.

People often ask why councils in the UK are interested in getting involved in the Scheme. We are keen to learn from counterparts in the Commonwealth and to share ideas. Also, from my own experience the Scheme project meant that our staff had to review our own systems in order to be able to explain them clearly to colleagues. Working on projects outside their everyday tasks not only contributed to their own personal skills development, but generated enthusiasm for their day to day work and a better understanding of the challenges for local government in different parts of the Commonwealth.

I am keen to see projects developed in India which can help inform the debate on governance and decentralisation. I hope that the national and sub-national networks can play and active part in disseminating the results of the Scheme, and most importantly of all, I am keen to see practitioners learning from each other and sharing their experiences as we all work towards improving local government, and the services which we provide, across the whole Commonwealth.

I hope that you will embrace the opportunities that the Scheme has to offer and we look forward to working with you on it.

I would now like to invite the Hon'ble Minister Kumar, to join with me in launching the Commonwealth Local Government Good Practice Scheme.