The non-local degenerate Cahn-Hilliard equation is derived from the Vlasov equation with long range attraction. We study the local limit as the delocalization parameter converges to 0. The difficulty arises from the degeneracy which requires compactness estimates, but all necessary a priori estimates can be obtained only on the nonlocal quantities yielding almost no information on the limiting solution itself. We introduce a novel condition on the nonlocal kernel which allows us to exploit the available nonlocal a priori estimates. The condition, satisfied by most of the kernels appearing in the applications, can be of independent interest. Our approach is flexible and systems can be treated as well.