Prime minister Tony Blair's usual response to criticisms that he has failed to improve services is that it takes time to reverse the effects of 18 years of Conservative rule.

Despite the government's tendency to appeal to voters for their patience while it takes on the enormous task of improving services, it has shown little appreciation of the similar - albeit smaller - task facing residents in some of England's most deprived neighbourhoods.

Residents involved in the £2bn New Deal for Communities (NDC) community-led regeneration initiative may not be faced with problems on the same scale as the government, but their job to transform neighbourhoods deprived for decades is neither swift nor easy.

But having allocated about £50m to each of the 39 NDCschemes over 10 years, there is an overwhelming feeling among those involved that the government is now expecting results from its investment that will show its flagship regeneration programme is working.

Helen McCarthy, a researcher at think-tank Demos, says the government's expectation for concrete results just four years into the programme is a problem. "Ten years is not actually that long for neighbourhoods where public services have historically underperformed."

Caroline Gaunt, policy officer at Urban Forum, an umbrella body for voluntary and community groups, says: "The idea of creating a community-led programme was unprecedented and it will take a long time to achieve."

But even if the government should be more modest in its expectations, a question remains over whether NDC schemes should have made more progress.

Bad publicity has dogged the initiative, which was launched in 1999, and there have been reports that some of the schemes have been split by power struggles between community representatives and other agencies sitting on partnership boards.

One of the NDC schemes that has had problems is Aston Pride in Birmingham, which failed to establish proper constitutional arrangements and consequently spent just £2.4m of its £54m allocation between 2001 and 2003. Following government intervention, Aston Pride's board was told it had to create a new partnership delivery model because it was spending money too slowly.

Other NDC schemes have also underspent and there are fears that, unless the cash is used more quickly, the Treasury will reduce future funding for regeneration.

But Gaunt says this slowness is not necessarily bad because it shows thought is going into how it can best be used. Before the first allocation was made available, schemes had a year zero in which to consider how they might use it, and Gaunt believes this period should have been longer.

Despite some of the negative press that has surrounded the scheme, an evaluation carried out by Sheffield Hallam University and published last week is positive about its future (news, page 10, 23 October).

It highlights the fact that four-fifths of NDC schemes have involved communities, while in some areas elections for community representatives are attracting 87 per cent of the public vote, a considerable achievement when there are councils that struggle to achieve a 40 per cent turnout.

But the report also points to several problems, including disagreements between community representatives and other agencies about how money should be spent.

McCarthy admits that flaws in the programme have hindered the success of NDC so far. While the government has given local people the responsibility for finding solutions to crime, drugs, health, education and housing problems in their area, little has been done to build infrastructure at local level to allow them to do this, she says.

Staffing issues are described as the "single most important constraint on delivery" in the report, which says just 40 per cent of NDC schemes are fully staffed.

The picture it paints is one in which staff with the right mix of skills are hard to recruit and retain.

Community representatives are leaving because of burn-out, chairpersons are changing more often than they should, and chief executives are departing.

Residents involved in NDC can find it costly on several fronts. A survey carried out by Urban Forum found that 78 per cent of respondents devoted an average of 12 hours a week without payment.

They were also unsure about how their benefits entitlements might be affected by their work, and some had complained about the red tape involved in claiming expenses for sums as small as £5.

Community representatives also face pressures from local people to represent their interests.

It is a demanding role, requiring energy, imagination and the ability to juggle various pressures. No wonder some schemes are finding it difficult to attract people who will offer a long-term commitment.

McCarthy says: "You will always hear stories about people who have done great things for their community and have an entrepreneurial approach. But there is too much crossing of fingers and hoping those people will be in every area."

She adds that the community representatives are being asked to "deliver complex initiatives" but their skills need to be developed and motivation kept alive.

Alan McDade, housing co-ordinator at Bristol's NDC, Community at Heart, which funds about 100 projects, admits that attracting community representatives is difficult.

A former community representative himself, he knows how demanding the job can be. He became involved with the NDC when he took a neighbour who had been mugged to a community safety meeting and became frustrated at the proposed solutions to cutting crime in the area. His involvement grew from there and, as a part-time postal worker, he was able to devote a lot of time to meetings. With the help of the NDC, McDade, who left school with no qualifications, undertook a housing degree and obtained a job at the NDC.

But although the NDC has changed his life, McDade says meeting the demands of the community and the government is not easy, and admits he now avoids using his nearby shops to escape constant pressure from locals.

"Local people were under the impression that the NDC would be an overnight success story. But Barton Hill [an area of Bristol] will never have this money again, so we need to spend it wisely," he says.

At the same time, says McDade, the government pushes the schemes to spend and the emphasis is on "deliver, deliver, deliver". This pressure, plus the inexperience of many on the partnership board, led in the beginning to money being wasted in projects that were not worthwhile.

More time and the opportunity to work as a shadow partnership board would have led to fewer problems, adds McDade.

Chief executives also find themselves tugged in different directions by the community and by the government. Director of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies Neil McInroy says: "On one hand, NDC is bottom-up. It is about the community steering development. It takes time, skills and patience to manage that. On the other, the chief executive has to meet an amazing number of targets from the government."

He adds that the government needs to be less rigid and target-driven, and allow NDC schemes to make a few mistakes if necessary without feeling under threat of government intervention.

The Sheffield Hallam University evaluation concludes that there is a sentiment running through NDC schemes that "now is the time to deliver". McDade agrees: "We have always said four, five and six would be the years we would deliver."

It is to be hoped they are all right.