Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department is taking steps to work with community-led organisations to develop measurement tools based on programme implementation data to identify programmes that are suitable for (a) investment and (b) scale-up.

The UK's International Development Strategy recognises the importance of locally-led decision-making - to give those who benefit from our programmes a voice in what we do and how we do it.

The FCDO's Official Development Assistance (ODA) programming decisions are delegated to those closest to delivery, working with local organisations to assess emerging evidence and programme performance.

Our approach to annual programme monitoring ensures that teams look at the learning being built through delivery and at programme delivery against objectives. This enables informed decisions on future changes to the programme, including on possible scale-up. All programme annual reviews are published on Dev Tracker (devtracker.gov.uk).

The FCDO are developing an advisory panel which will include local and UK based organisations who will represent community led organisations. The advisory panel will support the FCDO in developing our approach to working with small organisations. We will test our thinking and approaches with this group before implementing changes to approach. So far over 100 organisations have expressed an interest in becoming part of this advisory panel.