Issue - meetings

To present information of the Environment Department’s contribution to the Language Strategy.

To accept the report and note the observations received.

The report was presented by the Assistant Head of Environment Department ⁠who referred briefly to the following main points: 

⁠It was noted that the front-line nature of the Department led to daily contact with the public and Councillors, therefore every effort was being made to promote the language from day to day, through the work and actions of the staff.

He confirmed that the Department's policies promoted and supported the Welsh language, since consideration of the Welsh language had been central to the development of the Joint Local Development Plan. He added that there was a dedicated Planning Policy in place for dealing with language matters and noted that the Supplementary Planning Guidance provided further detailed guidance on how the Welsh language should be taken into account through all types of developments. He highlighted that the process of developing a new Local Development Plan was currently underway as one of the priorities of the Council Plan. He emphasised that the Welsh language was central to the development of this Plan.

The Members were reminded that the Council had introduced an Article 4 Direction across the Gwynedd Local Planning Authority Area (noting that this did not include areas that are within the Eryri National Park boundaries). It was reported that planning permission was required to change a property from a main residency into a second home or short-term holiday let since the Article 4 Direction had come into force on 1 September 2024. He explained that the objective was to have better control of the housing stock within the County, to meet the housing needs of Gwynedd's residents. He elaborated that the Direction was a means of assisting the aim of supporting and promoting the Welsh language.

He reported that there had been significant progress in terms of the Department's language skills statistics during the past year, through the self-assessment questionnaire. It was noted that a high number of staff were front-line workers, such as the Waste and Recycling services, where they do not have easy access to the staff intranet site. Consequently, the self-assessment questionnaires were completed with team leaders to gain an understanding of the workforce's language needs. It was highlighted that 81.4% of the Department's staff had completed the questionnaire, and that 83.6% of those employees reached the language designations for their posts. It was acknowledged that the Department needed to continue developing this field, but the officers were confident that they would see progress in future as the work continued.

The efforts of the staff to learn the language and improve their language skills were praised.

During the discussion, the following observations were made:- 

A member drew attention to a statistic within the report that noted that three planning applications had been refused partly due to various language issues, and that 13 planning applications had been granted permission with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5