7 ANNUAL REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF WELSH LANGUAGE STANDARDS PDF 350 KB
To consider
and discuss the Annual Report and offer observations on matters contained in
the Report.
Additional documents:
Decision:
To accept the report
and note the observations received and approve the report to be published in
line with the deadline of 30 June 2022.
Minutes:
The report was presented by the Language
Adviser, and she briefly drew attention to the following main points:
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The Language Adviser explained that this report had been created as a
result of Section 44 of the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, which made it
a requirement for the Council after the end of the last financial year, before
30 June 2022.
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It was also noted that its purpose was to summarise and explain how the
Council implemented and complied with the language standards.
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Pride was expressed that the report's figures showed that 99.1% of the
Council's workforce had Welsh language skills. This figure included any person
who had any type of Welsh language skills - whether they were fluent,
partly-fluent or only understood a little bit of the language.
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It was expressed that 91% of
all Council staff met the language designation of their post. The ability to
work through the medium of Welsh was very important to the Council, and the
Language Adviser was proud that this figure was high. Nevertheless, it was
accepted that this figure could be increased. One way of attempting to do this
at present was by offering Welsh language training to those staff who did not
yet meet their language requirements, in order to help them develop the skills.
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It was noted that 909 jobs had
been advertised on the Council's website in the last financial year where it
was noted that Welsh language skills were essential for the role.
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It was explained that a number of developments had been completed over
the year in order to ensure that bilingual services could be offered effectively:
o
The Translation and Democracy Services teams had been busy over the year
developing facilities in order to be able to hold multi-location meetings.
Testing had been undertaken to ensure that the meetings could be held with
people attending in the chambers and some people attending virtually, whilst
also ensuring that the simultaneous translation service could continue without
any obstacles.
o
Trials had been undertaken with Council departments for a new self-assessment
system. This system asked them to complete a self-assessment in order to see to
what extent they complied with the language standards. This enabled the
Corporate Support department to carry out a Corporate Self-assessment of the
Council's compliance with the language standards, for submission to the Welsh
Language Commissioner.
Members
of the committee were given an opportunity
to ask questions:
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A member asked whether it was
possible to look at the percentage of Council staff numbers who met the
language designation level of their job over time, so that it could be compared
with the last years.
- It was asked whether it would be possible to contact other agencies and bodies that collaborated with the Council when they suffered from linguistic failures. A member also asked if this could be done at a high level in order to ensure that the linguistic standards of our partners were sufficient. ... view the full minutes text for item 7