Bridgebuilder

The person speaking is Lesley Chalmers, chief executive at the English Cities Fund and former chief of Manchester council. The project she's talking about is the regeneration of Hulme, one of the city's shabbiest areas.

For four years, that scheme was headed by David Lunts, now head of the urban policy unit at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and responsible for huge chunks of the Communities Plan.

Having spent four years undoing the mistakes of the past in Manchester, Lunts is candid about the difficulties that lie ahead.

For a start, he is only too aware that the Communities Plan isn't top priority for every government department. Take the Department for Transport, which is contending with a rail and road system stretched to breaking point just as the Thames Gateway demands new transport systems. A cabinet committee has been created to pull the departments together, but will it be able to deliver?

"It will always be the art of the possible," Lunts says, "and we will find out in the next few months how far it is possible to have a step change in the way we provide infrastructure."

The London-Stansted-Cambridge growth area, in particular, is eagerly awaiting the outcome of the airports consultation to be released by the Department for Transport this summer. If an extra runway is added to the airport, the development plans will have to change. This could hold up development, Lunts acknowledges.

"A lot of critical decisions are actually taken at a fairly parochial level," says Lunts, describing the lack of regional overview in the planning system. But he hopes the two new urban development corporations for the Thames Gateway in Thurrock and east London could drive decisions forward. Three more urban regeneration companies were created this week in West Cumbria & Furness, Sandwell and Derby. Soon CABE Space, a unit dedicated to improving parks and other public areas, will be launched. Lunts hopes to unveil how this will operate in the next few months and consult on how to distribute the £89m liveability fund promised in the plan. However, with war at the forefront of politicians' minds, he may have to wait a while longer.

Lunts says a second problem is the recruitment crisis among planners, which needs to be eased if more affordable housing is to be built. Planning departments received £75,000 each at the start of this month to spend on new staff, training and so on, with extra money linked to good performance.

It will always be the art of the possible, and we will find out in the next few months how far it is possible to have a step change

The problems aren't limited to the planning sector, though. "There are issues about the capacity in terms of building and construction skills," says Lunts. "All of those are likely to be challenges that need to be specifically addressed."

Then there's the slow take-up of off-site manufacturing, a keystone of the plan. UK housebuilders do less off-site manufacture than any of their colleagues in western Europe – a fact that exasperates Lunts.

"There is no doubt that we ought to be able to do more off-site manufacture and volumetric procurement. It is nonsensical that the housebuilding industry is so far behind the times in that regard," he insists.

His enthusiasm is tempered by a warning that new systems must be thoroughly tested in order to avoid the accidents that gave prefab a bad name in the past.

Talking to Lunts' former colleagues, it becomes evident that he brings this energy to all his work. His Manchester cohort Chalmers describes him as a "doer". She recalls going around the city with him measuring roads and doorways in an effort to assess even the smallest components of a successful community. As part of this commitment to getting the details right, Lunts oversaw the design competition for a bridge to link two halves of Hulme separated by a motorway. The graceful resulting arch, designed by architect Wilkinson Eyre, serves not only as infrastructure but also as a powerful symbol of the area's rediscovered confidence.

As a politician turned practitioner turned policymaker, Lunts has always been realistic about what can be achieved. Chris Brown, director of Igloo Regeneration, also worked with Lunts in Hulme. He recalls: "David has a good understanding of realpolitik. He knows that you can only do what you can do and not necessarily what you would want to do."

For example, one might expect someone who has devoted so much of his career to Manchester to feel the North got a raw deal in the Communities Plan. Not a bit of it. "The scale of transformation in the communities [in the pathfinders] is every bit as significant as is it in the growth areas," he says. "In my view, both the growth areas and the pathfinders are exciting, so I don't think the South is getting all the goodies."

He's determined to escape the past failures of social housing, which means fewer new large-scale social housing estates and no piecemeal growth.