Consultants who live a long way from communities are less likely to understand their needs, Hazel Blears has said.

Setting out an ‘empowerment action plan' on how the Government would deliver greater devolution to communities, the secretary of state said using outside advisers could end up as a missed opportunity.

‘Engaging expensive consultants who live a long way away doesn't always work. One of the most familiar things in regeneration is that you do fantastic things then, five years later, you wonder where all that energy went.'

She also said her department would make greater use of national petitions in deciding policy.

Ms Blears warned the localism agenda would not deliver instant results. ‘It takes months, if not years, to get people really engaged at local level. The real prize for us is getting people "informing upstream" when we're talking about service design.' She called for a new commissioning framework that got local people involved in programmes from the beginning, and ensured they were ‘empowered not opposed'.

Key initiatives will include participatory budgets and community kitties, which will be taken forward by 18 as-yet-unnamed councils which will become ‘empowerment champions' and share £35m of funding. The agenda will be run jointly between DCLG and the LGA.

LGA chairman, Sir Simon Milton, said: ‘There has been an erosion of democracy, a cynicism with politicians, and with the ability of seemingly-unreachable political structures to deliver solutions. These proposals will go part of the way to addressing people's feelings of powerlessness, but only within a national context of councils being given the power to change the places where they live for the better.'

The plan can be found at http://www Learning to change neighbourhoods contains further details..peopleandparticipation.net