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Lessons from area-based regeneration initiatives are rarely transferred to mainstream services, a two-year research project published last week reveals.

The study was commissioned by the then Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions and looked at nine area-based initiatives in six localities between 1999 and 2001. It finds that most area-based initiatives distract from thinking about and responding to core problems in mainstream services.

The report looks at collaboration and co-ordination between education action zones, employment zones, health action zones, New Deal for the Communities, New Start, Sure Start, community legal service partnerships, the crime reduction programme and the out-going single regeneration budget.

It highlights the inadequate mechanisms in place for ensuring that successful initiatives continue, whether in the mainstream or as projects. It also points to the lack of commitment to long-term sustainability.

The report recommends that central and local government "should invest in the transfer of learning from area-based initiatives into mainstream delivery. Reconfiguring the mainstream to think in area terms may be necessary in order to achieve genuine change in mainstream programmes.

"Alternatively, area-based initiatives must be recognised as being experiments grounded in mainstream thinking rather than being the marginal one-off initiatives they currently seem to be for many mainstream agencies."

The report, produced by the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Newcastle and the Office for Public Management, acknowledges the recent policy shift away from small-area approaches towards mainstream programmes and strategic partnerships, particularly in the light of the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy Action Plan.

The report counsels against local strategic partnerships overstretching themselves or becoming "talking shops".

- Collaboration and Co-ordination in Area-Based Initiatives from www.neighbourhood.dtlr.gov.uk/guidance/pdf/summary.pdf