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Education and Training Projects

Following the changes to the English planning system, notably the extra importance given to engagement requirements, BDOR (with others) launched a highly successful national training programme for local authority planners and others. This programme - Community Involvement in Planning – used an innovative, locally-based ‘hosting' system for the courses, with the added benefit of leaving behind local support groups to share and advance practice. Over 60 authorities benefited from this programme.

A related programme for planners  on facilitation skills (for policy teams) and process design (for development control teams) is currently planned in association with Planning Aid. This is complemented by our involvement in a training programme for senior Councillors as part of the IDeA's Leadership programme (with the Planning Advisory Service). In September 2007 Jeff Bishop was one of a select group delivering a 'Masterclass' in participation at an OECD International Summer School in Bologna.

A more coherent and cumulative, but also related, approach to training is happening through a partner organisation to BDOR, of which Jeff Bishop is a Director. InterAct Networks is setting up a national framework of Local Facilitator Networks to support local participative processes and build organisational capacity for better engagement. Networks emerge from a substantial and intense four day training programme now being delivered all across the UK - and in a varied form within, amongst others, the Environment Agency.

Jeff Bishop undertook (with Ray Lorenzo from Perugia) a substantial training programme across Italy in community participation and sustainable development . This has now resurfaced as a series of nationally promoted courses under the auspices of a new training and development company entitled ILEX.

Jeff Bishop has been a Visiting Professor in Urban Management at City University, New York and in Vermont and Carolina, and a British Council Visiting Fellow to Australia, focusing on all aspects of Environmental Education.