Urban regeneration projects are often failing to deliver value for money, a committee of MPs has warned.

The Commons urban affairs sub-committee said that brownfield schemes have been of "poor quality" in many deprived areas.

Tougher standards for inner city development projects were needed to push up standards, the report concluded.

The study of the effectiveness of government regeneration initiatives also concluded that there was too much of a "top down" approach to schemes.

Members of the committee were also sceptical about whether regional government offices were having much impact on the ground.

"We recommend that in response to this report, ministers outline what impact the government offices are having on the ground," said the report.

"Ministers must consider whether the government offices add to the bureaucracy and administration costs of delivering regeneration."

Labour MP Clive Betts, chairman of the sub-committee, said there were "too many centrally driven national area-based initiatives".

"Those working on the ground cannot hope to make sense of all the different national programmes, never mind the associated bureaucracy," he said.

"Different places have different needs. Government currently assumes one size fits all, this is wrong.

"Local authorities need the freedom to devise local solutions to local needs."

The conclusions of the committee report were backed by the Conservatives.

"We welcome this report as it confirms what we have been saying - that it is very difficult to make a model that fits every circumstance," said shadow regeneration minister Philip Hammond.

"This government thinks it can control everything from the centre and is guilty of giving local authorities autonomy and powers with one hand, and then putting constraints around them with the other."

He warned that top down approaches were "neither credible nor practical".

"We believe in a decentralising agenda which would allow individual local authorities to address the real priorities of their communities."