For the past three years, we’ve conducted a Welsh language survey to get the views of Welsh speakers in the county borough about how they prefer to communicate with and access information from us. The survey also asked them which language they used socially and in the workplace and how often they spoke Welsh.
The latest survey took place over February and March and the results are now in.
Encouragingly the survey suggests an increase in people contacting the council in Welsh.
Over the past three years, there has also been a steady increase in the number of people contacting the council via social media and the website in Welsh.
We’ve listened…
One point that was highlighted in the last two annual surveys, was that people feel it’s important for bilingual staff to clearly identify themselves as a Welsh speaker. Because of this, we’ve issued all Welsh-speaking staff with a lanyard which incorporates the ‘Work Welsh’ orange logo.
In the survey, it was also identified that some people didn’t realise that the council provides services bilingually. As a result, we’ll be working on promoting our Welsh language services and raising awareness amongst Welsh language speakers.
A number of comments were made about the lack of Welsh speaking staff members within certain departments. Therefore, we’ll be looking at our new and vacant posts list and identifying gaps in service delivery to ensure that we have sufficient Welsh speakers in all departments.
Work to be done
We know there is work to be done to improve, and to ensure this happens we are setting up an online focus group of local Welsh speakers to help us better understand the barriers they may face when using Welsh in the wider community.
Cllr Hugh Jones, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for the Welsh Language at Wrexham Council said “I’m pleased that we are seeing an increase in the number of people choosing to contact us in Welsh and I’m particularly encouraged to see an increase online as this is an area where we’ve concentrated on in the last few years. It’s important that we give our Welsh speaking residents as many opportunities as possible to contact us in the language of their choice. I hope that many of our residents will take up the offer of becoming part of the focus group so that we can views and comments from as wide cross-section of our Welsh speaking community as possible”.
If you would like to be part of this online focus group please get in touch with us at cymraeg@wrexham.gov.uk
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