ICG 2009 Golf Champion crowned

C-A Antman has succeeded at last in becoming the ICG perpetual trophy golf champion 2009. At Orresta Golf Club in Västmanland today Clas Åke had a fine round of 35 points fighting off strong opposition from a solid display by a number of competitors. In his crowning speech Clas Åke thanked ICG and his partners for the day and did a wonderful jig whilst clutching the trophy

ICG Sponsors Orresta Golf Club

As part of ICG's responsible marketing programme for 2009 the company has decided to sponsor Orresta Golf Club near Västerås. This is an outstanding golf course with a superb and friendly staff. As our company has hosted its perpetual golf trophy at this club for the last four years we have now taken the decision to involve ourselves with the club.

A tremendously busy week

Last Friday I spent some time working with Sweden's manager of the Year 2009, Palle Lundberg, the chief executive of Botkyrka Council. Along with Palle I had some sessions with a number of his top team working with international issues. A really exciting and interesting development for ICG is the number of requests we are receiving from Swedish local authorities for assistance in establishing partnerships with English local authorities. Apart from previous work with Jönköping and North Lincolnshire, we are working with Stockholm and Leeds, Växjö and Solihull and Helsingborg and a potential partner. We have had a number of requests from Swedish counties to form partner links with UK counties also. These projects offer tremendous potential for sharing of ideas, systems and experiences to help improve services and ICG is very proud to be working with this.
We have spent some time also this week with ABB in Ludvika as well as Stockholm City Council, Helsingborg City Council, VKL and a number of other important customers.

Europe's Most Enterprising town- Scarborough

Just saw on the BBC that Scarborough has just won the award for Europe's most enterprising town, beating such cities as Helsinki Valencia, Liege and others. What a fantastic achievement and great recognition of the work of the Renaissance Partnership team in Scarborough. Lord Mandelson has congratulated the town today.
Follow the link here to read the BBC article and watch a news clip.

Birmingham and back to Sweden

We spent late Thursday and Friday in Birmingham meeting with representatives of Solihull Council to discuss partnership potential with a Swedish LEA in education. The visit was successful from an matching perspective and our task now is to recommend to our Swedish client partner how to move forward. This a real opportunity for two education authorities to work across the culture gap and create share best practice. After arriving back home this morning at 02.30 I can genuinely say we have had a hectic two weeks.

ICG in Scarborough, England

We are in England once again this week, with representatives from Sweden sharing professional ideas and service provision in bereavement services. Today we have had an exciting programme of seminars delivered by Tim Morris, chief executive of England's Institute of Crematoria and Cemeteries Management and Jack Startin and Barry Hutchinson from North Lincolnshire Council. Our team from Sweden were very impressed and stimulated by the seminars and excited by the information exchange processes of the day. tomorrow we will visit Woodlands Cemetery in Scarborough to look at the services offered and delivered herein this town.