Local leadership

 Local leadership is defined as the pursuit of community well-being through the facilitation of strategic interventions that would not otherwise have happened and which are informed by and accountable to the public.

it has three core components:

• key community priorities
• galvanising a range of stakeholders to contribute to delivering these priorities
• involving citizens in priority identification and delivery.

Increasingly, globalisation issues - such as economic competitiveness and related migration and urbanisation, and climate change - demand strong local governance and local leadership to respond to these challenges.

CLGF highlighted the importance of effective local leadership in its Aberdeen Agenda: Commonwealth principles on good practice for local democracy and good governance which said that

"effective leadership is central to strong democracy... to enable local government to deliver quality services to the local community" and chose Delivering development through local leadership as the them of the Commonwealth Local Government Conference 2007.

Related publications

Delivering development through local leadership, research paper for background to the Commonwealth Local Government Conference 2007, published by CLGF, March 2007.