This paper explores New Labour's desire to refurbish the physical and social fabric of excluded neighbourhoods through its New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme. It begins by examining three key concepts that embody and underpin this policy intervention – community, agency and exclusion and proceeds by contrasting these conceptual dimensions with a set of discordant, intra-neighbourhood processes of conflict, contestation and division, identified by recently conducted fieldwork in an NDC area. I argue that such processes produce a complex social terrain that is inhabited by social agents with a diverse range of needs, values and experiences, before discussing how this challenges and de-stabilises NDC's aspiration to ‘promote’ community, change individual behaviour and tackle exclusion effectively. The paper concludes by questioning whether New Labour's desire to implement a ‘community’ project, shaped by theoretical precepts, constrains NDC's ability to deliver lasting change to excluded areas.