Issue - meetings

To consider the report.

To accept the report and to note the observations received.

The report was presented by the Welsh Language Learning and Development Officer, and she briefly drew attention to the following main points:

Members were reminded that the Language Designations project was commissioned by this Committee in 2015 and was operational until 2023. It was explained that the purpose of the project was to ensure the consistency and appropriateness of the language requirements of the Council's posts, while the Council prepared for the statutory requirement of the Language Standards introduced in 2016, to keep a record of the language levels of its staff. It was added that the other purpose of the project was to ensure that support was available to staff members to use the Welsh language and continue to learn it, reducing the risk that Council staff would not be able to provide bilingual services to the people of Gwynedd.

It was noted that all posts advertised prior to the implementation of this project denoted 'fluent' language requirements and a detailed and ongoing record of the language proficiency of Council staff was not officially kept. It was added that the wording of the language skill levels differed from those used nationally which caused challenges when researching suitable training for similar language levels.

It was explained that the first part of the project was completed by the Human Resources service in 2016, where Welsh language skills levels were adapted to the wording used nationally (Entry, Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced). It was added that the service had also adapted all posts within the Council in order to adapt the language requirement for them in line with the requirements of the post.

It was reported that the second part of the project had taken place in 2017 where research had been carried out on how to gather detailed and accurate language assessments for staff, ensuring that there was support to maintain language skills levels or training to enable any member of staff to reach the appropriate language levels for their jobs. It was noted that this part of the project had been piloted with the Council's Gwynedd Consultancy department before being expanded to all other departments. Pride was expressed that this had led to the Language Self-assessment that staff members could find on the in-house self-service system, which informed them of their language skills level upon completion and gave staff members the opportunity to denote if they needed any help or to develop confidence to use the Welsh language. It was pointed out that a technological system had now been developed to store all the responses to the language self-assessment, thus providing officers with essential data.

It was confirmed that this data which included staff language levels and the numbers of individuals attending language training was shared with heads of departments on a quarterly basis and was used regularly as departments prepared to submit reports to this Committee. It was elaborated that a member of staff from the Council's main departments and Byw'n Iach sat on the Language Designation Forum which met  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7