POWYS County Council is working to address a number of breaches of the Welsh Language Standards that occurred during the last year.
At a meeting of the council’s Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet on Tuesday, June 10 senior councillors received a draft annual report on the Welsh Language Standards at the council during 2024/2025.
The report needs to be agreed to allow it to be published on the council’s website by the end of the month which is a legal requirement.
Cabinet member for the Welsh language Cllr Sandra Davies (Labour) said: “It gives me a great honour to present this annual report.
“All Welsh councils must comply with the Welsh language standards which ensures Welsh is treated no less favourably than English.
“The Welsh language commissioner (Efa Gruffudd) monitors compliance and takes enforcement action for breaches.”
She added that the council’s forward plan for the next year includes promoting Welsh medium education and its bilingual pages on the council’s website.
Cabinet then went ahead and approved the report.
The document reveals that the council have been working to overcome several problems that have been reported to the commissioner.
Following complaints the commissioner investigated the council’s lack of publishing meeting agendas, minutes, and decisions in Welsh.
This was found to breach standards 40 and 47.
The report said that the council discussed “solutions and procedures” with the commissioner in the summer of 2024 which included using artificial intelligence (AI) to help with the translation process.
Further complaints were reported on this issue, and in December the commissioner found the council had breached standards 40, 47 and 52.
The report said that the council had met the commissioner in January to “discuss solutions” to the document translation problem with a 12 month timetable agreed for implementing improvements.
The report said, “We sought advice from Torfaen County Borough Council (Gwent/South Wales) to learn about their translation system and are grateful for their guidance.”
Another complaint was made regarding the failure of simultaneous translation during a meeting.
It is expected that a councillor can speak at meeting in Welsh with their comments translated by an interpreter in real time to non-Welsh speakers.
The report said: “Due to an unexpected technical problem our simultaneous translation system failed at a council meeting.
“As a result, a councillor was unable to contribute in Welsh and made a complaint.
“This was a rare case which we investigated immediately.”
A review was conducted by the council’s ICT team, and they made some changes to the hardware in the hope that it will stop the problem happening again.
The report said: “We are committed to promoting and facilitating the use of the Welsh language at council meetings and have a highly experienced and trained team of in-house translators.”
