A policy-enabled service gateway contains a gateway function and a local policy engine containing policies related to the functionality of the associated gateway function. New or updated policies may be provided to the local policy engine from a centralized policy server. The policies within the local policy engine are functionally related to the gateway function and provide for policy and/or charging enforcement associated with the gateway function. If the local policy engine does not contain a particular policy, it may request the policy from the centralized policy server. The local policy engine may choose to store the requested policy for future use.