the Conditions that spawned last summer's race riots exist in as many as 40 towns across England, the head of an inquiry into the disturbances has warned.
Ted Cantle chaired the joint Local Government Association, Home Office and DTLR community cohesion panel into the violent outbreaks at Bradford, Burnley and Oldham.

Speaking at the launch of guidance on community cohesion for councils, Cantle said the panel had found "polarised and segregated communities, with people leading parallel lives".

A fundamental problem was that each individual's experience of a community was solely in relation to his or her background, whether white or an ethnic minority.

As a result rioters had been able to exploit this ignorance by "building on a lack of honesty and openness".

Cantle said: "This is about black and white communities changing and it's a difficult message to get home. A lot of white communities are monocultural with deep-seated views that have to be broken down.

"At a local level there has to be a sense of debate and ownership and we have to involve dissatisfied groups."

He criticised some past regeneration initiatives.

"Some initiatives seemed to be pushing money without any real clarity over why the money was going into certain places," he said.

Some regeneration programmes had reinforced problems by giving people the idea that others were doing better than them, Cantle added.