Millions of pounds were spent in the Seventies and Eighties on renovating and redeveloping two housing estates.

In Whitehawk, 1,000 pre-war Brighton Council houses were knocked down and replaced by 1,400 council and housing association houses and flats.

In Moulsecoomb, an extensive renovation scheme was undertaken in a bid to make the pre-war houses as good as new.

The investment did improve both estates and was done with the best of intentions. But many of the underlying social problems refused to go away.

Now a different approach is being tried as part of the New Deal for Communities project in which £47 million of money from the Government is being invested in the East Brighton area.

This time, all changes are being put through with the active involvement and co-operation of the community rather than having change imposed on people.

It is part of a change in delivering services being practised, not just in Whitehawk and Moulsecoomb, but also in other parts of Brighton and Hove.

Social services and housing have been delivered from neighbourhood centres for many years. Now there are plans to increase this and have neighbourhood offices for most other environmental services.

Exactly where these will be is still being worked out by Brighton and Hove Council, but it will happen within the next year or two.

In Whitehawk and Moulsecoomb, progress is already being made. Last year, on each estate, the local infant and junior schools were merged into single primary schools.

The junior school buildings remained in use, leaving large infant school buildings empty and available. They will become two of the main centres for activity .

In Whitehawk, the school will be used as a centre for the New Deal team, for community development and the youth service. Other uses may follow. Similar proposals are being made for Moulsecoomb.

Jerry le Sueur is the project director for New Deal. An experienced former housing official, he has been working in Brighton for the last 20 years. He said: "We have got to look at new ways of delivering services. It won't happen overnight and there will be mistakes on the way but in 20 years time, these areas will be very different from how they are now."

He wants everyone to get involved, not just the local people but other professional agencies such as the police and the two health trusts. There are encouraging signs this is happening.

There is involvement with the private sector too. Both estates are notoriously short of shops and cafes. If more could be established, this would help create better communities. He said the biggest problem was poverty and that must be tackled.

One feature of New Deal will be improving training and providing new jobs, many of them in the area.

There will also be huge efforts made to improve child care which is a problem that inhibits some people from working. Tackling crime will also be a high priority and many of the schemes will help to nip it in the bud.

There has been concern from the union Unison that family centres in Whitehawk and Moulsecoomb may close as part of a review.

But everyone in the New Deal is anxious to point out the services being offered in these centres, such as drop-in facilities for families in crisis, will not be stopped. They may, however, be provided in a different way and in conjunction with other services.

Alison Ghani chairs the Community Partnership which is central to New Deal. She lives on the Saunders Park Estate which, along with the Bates Estate, are a smaller and sometimes forgotten part of the project. She said: "It should be a residents-led project covering education, unemployment, crime and health.

"Up to now it has worked well. We are putting forward new ideas to deal with old problems."

One of the first schemes which has been approved is a series of neighbourhood wardens to deal with local difficulties and stop some of them getting worse.

The Community Partnership is a 50/50 split between the residents and the professionals. Gradually the old resentment between the two is being broken down. The professionals are also working together as never before.

New Deal representatives have been to other towns and cities, ranging from Glasgow to Amsterdam, to see how they are getting on with similar projects. It is as important to find out what has not worked as to note the successes.

Within the next two years, the Community Partnership will take over from the council as the legally-accountable body for the New Deal project.

Ms Ghani emphasised that it will be totally accountable for every penny of taxpayers' money it spends.

The £5 million a year or so from New Deal is only a fraction of the estimated £50 million a year of public money placed in the area through services such as housing benefit, health and policing.

There has been some resentment from areas not included in New Deal, but Ms Ghani said: "There could be benefits for these areas as ideas are rolled across the whole town."

"All professionals have been incredibly supportive and open to ideas. We want everyone to be involved. Residents are important. They have to live with the problems and have some ideas about how to solve them. Not everything will work, but we are confident things are going to go very well."