Whitehall managers should take part in more "back to the floor" schemes to improve their understanding of how services are delivered, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has concluded.

The call came in a report on the first experimental "social enterprise zone", which found continuing barriers to the successful delivery of public services.

While some regulations, working methods and policies have been changed by the government there are other areas where problems are not being acknowledged, said the authors.

To tackle the problem, the report calls for senior Whitehall managers to get involved in more "back to the floor" schemes.

This would reconnect them with frontline staff and service users, the authors argue.

They also call for service users to be actively involved in monitoring the delivery of services and for local agency managers to be given delegated control over part of their budget to be spent on the basis of local needs.

Tuesday's report from the JRF also said the zone had prompted the development of innovative solutions to problems in London's East End and had influenced national policy in the process.

The SEZ is designed to promote the development of community services in the same what that Business Enterprise Zones encourage local economic growth.

The study, by Matthew Smerdon and David Robinson of Community Links, highlighted a range of successes such as the creation of an Incapacity Benefit freephone helpline and extra support for people claiming benefits at local JobCentres.

And after problems were identified in dealing with people who work in the black economy, the Inland Revenue seconded a senior policy official to the SEZ to gain a better understanding of the barriers faced by those who want to move from informal to formal work.

The official now heads a unit that is preparing proposals for the Inland Revenue on better ways of dealing with the "informal economy".

"Similarly, while some senior officials have responded positively to ideas emerging from local consultations, others have tended to treat new ideas as unwelcome criticism," noted the study.

Smerdon said the SEZ "has engaged local residents and front-line workers in designing and testing new solutions to local problems and has influenced national policy in the process".

"It has also gained considerable insight into the challenge of harnessing mainstream resources and using them more effectively at the local level, which remains an elusive goal for government," he added.

"The government's current emphasis on evidence-based policy making offers hope that it will become more interested in adapting and tailoring its mainstream spending programmes to fit a growing understanding of 'what works' in local circumstances.

"However, decisions about what constitutes compelling 'evidence' are still being taken centrally and there seems to be continuing scepticism over the real value of involving people with practical experience of services in the process of designing policy."