A Home Office report into last summer's race riots in northern England has blamed police, government and local communities for the "parallel lives" of white and black communities.

Launching the report, the former chief of Nottingham council, Ted Cantle, who led the study said: "We believe there is an urgent need to deal with the polarisation of communities within our towns and cities to prevent further trouble in future."

Highlighting the separate employment, educational, communal, cultural and voluntary activities of blacks and whites, the report finds that "many operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives".

"These lives often do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any meaningful interchanges. There is little wonder that the ignorance about each others' communities can easily grow into fear, especially when this is exploited by extremist groups," say the report's authors.

The 90-page report also attacks the absence of debate about race issues.

"The failure to communicate is compounded by the lack of honest and robust debate as people tiptoe around the sensitive issues of race, religion and culture," finds the report.

Faith schools: 'a significant problem'

Criticising central government for community initiatives that "lack coherence", the report mounts a challenge to Labour's planned expansion of faith schools.

"A significant problem is posed by existing and future mono-cultural schools, which can add to separation of communities," warns the report. "The development of more faith-based schools may, in some cases, lead to an increase in monocultural schools but this problem is not in any way confined to them."

There are currently 6900 faith schools in the UK.

The Church of England is planning up to 20 more in a £25 million programme and a further 20 in other faiths are planned, including a £12 million Islamic secondary school in Birmingham and a new Jewish school in London.

The Cantle study also found community opposition to "monocultural" schools, a policy backed by Tony Blair.

"Many people expressed views about 'segregated' or monocultural schools.Most people we spoke to felt that more such schools would add to the lack of contact and understanding between communities and we need to break that down," it says.

But the government has defended the policy, acknowledging that he had once been wrong to oppose single faith schools, Blunkett argued that "for many years people have campaigned to have their faith recognised in the same way as others".

"There is a tremendous commitment from families to a variety of faith-based schools who do extremely well," he told the BBC. "Unless we address the issue of changing the nature of the quality of opportunity that exists in education, in employment, in self-belief, in expectation and aspiration from parents and not just children, we won't win."

Inclusion

The Home Office report called on all state and independent schools to give at least 25 per cent of places to pupils from other religious backgrounds but warned that the means to make faith schools more inclusive "has not yet been established".

"All schools - whether faith or non-faith based - should seek to limit their intake from one culture or ethnicity. They should offer at least 25 per cent of places to reflect the other cultures or ethnicities within the local area," said the Cantle report.The report's authors dismissed "bussing" pupils from one ethnic group into schools dominated by children from another as "unsatisfactory.

As an alternative, the Cantle report proposes a "statutory duty" for headteachers to set up inter-school twinning projects, joint sport, art or culture events, teacher exchanges and joint parental activities.

A separate study by Home Office minister John Denham is to highlight the steps the government has already to tackle the 60 plus recommendations for practical action to address segregation.

Another three local reports into disturbances in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford were published on Tuesday and again stress that racial segregation was the main cause of the summer's violence.

Community cohesion review team's main recommendations

- A meaningful concept of "citizenship" in which the responsibilities of citizenship are clearly established.

- The setting up of a national debate, heavily influenced by younger people, to discuss in an open and honest way the issues preventing community cohesion and develop a permanent infrastructure to give young people a bigger voice and stake in society.

- Develop clear values of what it means to be a citizen of a modern multi-racial Britain and use them to provide a more coherent approach to education, housing, regeneration, employment and other programmes.

- Each local area needs to prepare a local community cohesion plan which will combat fear and ignorance of different communities.

- The promotion of cross-cultural contact between different communities to foster understanding and respect and develop a programme of "myth busting".

- A new Community Cohesion Task Force needs to be established to oversee the implementation of this work.