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Welsh Language Annual Monitoring and Single Equality Plan

Published: 11/07/2018

Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet will be presented with the Strategic Equality Plan Annual Report and Welsh Language Annual Report when it meets on Tuesday 17 July. Cabinet members will receive the end of year reports on progress and be asked to note the areas for improvement. There have been some outstanding areas of achievement in the Strategic Equality Plan including the publication of the Equal Pay Audit, increasing numbers of dementia friendly communities and businesses and memory cafes, alterations to schools enabling disabled pupils to fully access facilities and Disability Inclusion training for leisure centre employees. The Council also publishes an annual report on how it has met the Welsh Language Standards (WLS). There have been a number of achievements across different sectors of the Council including: ? Social Services: implementing the “More than Just Words Framework” which places them in a strong position to comply with the Standards and deliver bilingual services. ? Theatr Clwyd: active in raising the profile of Welsh language throughout all their activities. ? All Welsh medium schools achieved the Siarter Iaith Silver award for their increased use of Welsh in social settings and are now working towards Gold. ? The Welsh in Education Strategic Plan is being updated and is an important strategy for increasing the number of pupils learning through the medium of Welsh and, over time, the pool of potential Welsh speaking employees. Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Corporate Management and Assets, Councillor Billy Mullin, said: “The aim of Strategic Equality Plan is to ensure the delivery of positive outcomes for people with protected characteristics such as age, disability, race, sex and sexual orientation. Flintshire has made great strides forward in this area and we will continue to do so. “The achievements Flintshire has made across the board to embrace the Welsh Language Standards has been positive. We are committed to raising awareness of Welsh and will continue to encourage and support all employees to learn and use Welsh in the work environment every day. Our recently drafted Welsh Language Promotion Strategy also highlights the importance of working with our communities to further opportunities to meet the Welsh Government’s vision of one million speakers by 2050.” Although there are positive areas of progress, some issues remain as areas for improvement and Flintshire has identified these and will be making plans to secure improvement. These include improvement in data collection about the profile of our customers and promoting internal training opportunities. We continue to improve our Welsh language offer so that more employees complete Welsh language awareness training. Providing support to employees will help increase the number of Welsh speakers over time. This will support the Council to deliver bilingual services and meet the needs of Welsh speaking customers.