INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES
BURA recognise that regeneration and best practice transcends neighbourhood, city, regional and national boundaries. Given this the organisation has been successfully developing and building its international activities over recent years.
The principal objectives of BURA international work are
- To ensure that UK best practice is disseminated globally
- To identify international best practice and policy. Thereafter to examine whether this could be applied in the UK and if so what – if any – amendments would be required to ensure it met with UK statutory and operational frameworks
- To provide opportunities for our members to network with their international counterparts in order to extend their activity base
To this end BURA have undertaken a number of initiatives including
- Holding its first international conference in Barcelona
- Hosting numerous international visits to discuss and review the regeneration sector at the request of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
- Running a number of focussed international study tours, examples of which include a three day tour of Washington DC to examine Business Improvement Districts and a four day tour to Oakland to review US funding mechanisms
- Designing and Delivering on behalf of UKTI two major programmes of international inward mission to showcase UK best practice. As part of this process BURA provide expert guidance and support to UKTI on the scope and content of their Global Regeneration Opportunities: Places With Prospects Conference that was held in Birmingham in the October 2007.
- Maintaining a presence, including member events and networking opportunities at MIPIM
In the past two years BURA have actively engaged with a wide variety of international practitioners. This list of countries includes
- Australia
- Bahrain
- Bulgaria
- Canada
- China
- Czech Republic
- Hong Kong
- India
- Japan
- Poland
- Romania
- Sweden
- Taiwan
- Turkey
- USA
BURA’s global programme is overseen by the Chief Executive and International Manager. In addition, in September 2007 the Board set up a sub-group to work jointly with the executive on the strategic development of international activities. The Directors that sit on this sub-group are:
Shawn Riley, Rupert Robinson & Martin Venning
What other have said about BURA’s International Programme
Detailed below are a small selection of comments that BURA have received with respects to the development and management of its international inward study missions that were delivered on behalf of UKTI
“Just a short note to express our appreciation to all the effort and hard work you have put into CEPD visits. I must say everybody was very grateful and happy with the whole programme, which was really constructive and useful to Taiwan. It’s been a great pleasure to work with you and we will follow up with CEPD and discuss possible cooperation with BURA” - Ecotro (Taiwan).
“We would like to thank you once again for your care and perfect organisation of the whole trip. Thank you also for providing us with all the papers and publications about the process of brownfield regeneration in UK. It is an excellent source of information and arguments for further discussion about our national strategy” – CzechInvest (Czech Republic).
“We would like to thank you for everything but mainly for…Putting together such a comprehensive and excellent programme… Being so patient with us…Your good sense of humour…Your professionalism” – British Embassy, Ankara (Turkey).
“You made us so excellent honours that we bear those magnificent two days last week as yardstick to all further study visits and also as inspiring pattern to future receptions of our own (though we very much doubt to reach that level). Please receive our deepest and innermost thanks” – Boverket (Sweden).
