The mix-master

"This is challenging work in difficult territory. It is complex, risky and, at times, may feel thankless." This may sound like the job description of a UN weapons inspector but in fact it's Home Office minister Beverley Hughes talking about community cohesion last year. So, exactly which aspect of the work appealed to Ted Cantle, the local government veteran who has chaired the government-appointed community cohesion panel since March last year? And how much progress has Cantle seen since then?

He took the job, he says, because of the "ridiculous challenge" it presented. "The hardest part," he says, "is the magnitude of the task – it addresses so many aspects of polictical and social life." It involves advising councils and government departments on how to develop race relations strategies and training and employment opportunities for different ethnic communities. He juggles this with his other position as associate director of the Improvement and Development Agency, where he advises failing councils on leadership and management.

As a consequence, he has an exhausting schedule: in the week he meets Housing Today in London he will spend one more day in the capital before going to Leicester, Merthyr Tydfil and then home to Nottingham.

He was offered the community cohesion job in the wake of his no-holds-barred report into the race riots of summer 2001 in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham – the worst riots the UK had seen in 20 years. Published in December 2001, it painted a grim picture of no-go areas, dilapidated housing and ethnic groups treating each other with suspicion and made around 70 recommendations such as including children from a variety of cultures at single-faith schools and better leadership from local politicians and community leaders.

Anil Singh, chairman of Bradford's Manningham Housing Association, says that Cantle's report helped explode the image that the Asian community was a homogenous mass. Instead the Cantle report helped both politicians and the public to regard such communities as ethnically, culturally and religiously very different groups – and ones which don't always see eye to eye.

Now, Cantle must ensure that the theory is put into practice. "Our challenge is trying to get people to think about it in the round, as part of mainstream services," he says. "I don't want a set of new community cohesion experts who sit on the chief executive's or leader's shoulder and say "don't forget this or that". It has to be a mainstream process – otherwise we'll have failed. We have to try and make community cohesion feel as though it's part of the furniture."

Intangible idea, concrete change
But community cohesion is such an intangible notion. Will we see concrete changes or will the idea simply become yet another Blairite buzzword?

Cantle says that progress has been made, with the communities involved in the riots of summer 2001 recognising they have a problem. Last May, Burnley council produced a community cohesion plan, defining the term as "a state where different communities live and work confidently alongside each other, recognising each other's differences, but sharing a sense of belonging and place and working towards a common prosperity". It also backed Cantle's proposal for increasing employment and training opportunities for black and ethnic residents.

Also, says Cantle, his panel is in the process of issuing guidance on cohesion in youth, sport and leisure and the government invited councils to bid for a £6m cohesion pathfinders programme last October.

But cohesion is initially about attitudes, he says. "For too long with regeneration and housing we wanted to do physical things to a community – rebuild this, modernise that – but most of community cohesion is about changing attitudes and values."

Cantle is well-suited to the task of fostering good relations. He is a poised and polished communicator, considering questions carefully before he answers – but doing so without pulling any punches.

Community cohesion has to become a mainstream process – otherwise, we will have failed

"Ted has an ability to grasp complex issues and to talk about them in a coherent way," says fellow cohesion panel member and Luton chief executive Darra Singh. "He can talk on the hoof, deal with a variety of different people and encourage them to get involved in debate. He draws them out."

With almost 30 years' experience of the traditionally fraught relationship between council officers and members, Cantle chooses his words with care, not allowing politicial sensitivities to get in the way of his message, although he's too much of a straight-talker to be a diplomat.

Take, for example, his considered response to home secretary David Blunkett's controversial comments in the wake of Cantle's report, suggesting immigrants take lessons in "Britishness" and learn English: "Blunkett made a few comments at the time which were far more controversial than our report and perhaps overshadowed it. People thought our report precipitated the comments but he acted independently. You've just got to accept that that's his right."

However, discussing council standards, a decidedly less politically sensitive subject than race, Cantle's forthright side shows itself. He bemoans the lack of "brighter engaging minds", of "real thinking people", in local government, saying that in contrast "going back 20 years or so, there were some visionary things going on".

Cantle claims he never planned his career. "I just hung around in local government for a bit – I still don't know where I'll end up." But this disingenuous description belies a purposeful, instinctive and decisive attitude.

Follow the leader
After a social science degree, he got a job at Manchester Housing Aid dealing with families who had fled Uganda, which sparked his interest in race issues. His ability to communicate with both officers and council members led him to become director of housing at Wakefield at just 29.

Then, he says, "I didn't want to be director of housing for the next 10 years, so I went to the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. Then I thought, this is great but I'll just become remote, so I went back in as a housing director in Leicester, then chief executive at Nottingham."

At Nottingham, he won praise for his work on regeneration but, more than that, his time as chief executive was characterised by strong leadership – something for which he has criticised councils in towns including Burnley and Oldham. Given this track record, is it frustrating to deal with so many authorities struggling with leadership issues in his job at the Improvement and Development Agency? On the contrary, he says: "I like working with authorities trying to change.

"Any authority that's poor or weak has some very good services and people in it. There are some frustrations but the trick is trying to find out where they're capable of building success."