Councillors set to scrutinise Welsh language complaints made against council

17 complaints over alleged non-compliance with the Welsh Standards have been made about Wrexham Council in the last 12 months.

The Welsh Language Standards, which came into force in 2016, requires the local authority to comply with 171 Standards which help ensure “the Council treats the Welsh and English languages on a basis of equality and respects the rights of Welsh speakers.”

The Commissioner has the ability to impose a fine on the council of up to £5,000 for each instance of non-compliance.

A report due before members of the council’s customers, performance, resources and governance scrutiny committee on Thursday (June 17) details of the complaints and their outcomes have been published.

Between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021, 16 complaints over alleged non-compliance in relation to Wrexham Council were made by members of the to the Welsh Language Commissioner.

One complaint was also made direct to the local authority.

Of these five related to the website/portals on the website, four related to literature and documents, three related to signage, two related to posters and / or notices and two related to social media posts.

The report explains that of these, eight resulted in the Commissioner opening a full investigation into the complaints, two were initial enquiries (still pending and another six were discontinued).

Some of the complaints made about the local authority include a member of the public receiving an English only email reminder about bin collection and later an English only email from the council’s “MyAccount payment confirmation”.

A full investigation was launched into the incident and Wrexham Council are awaiting further guidance on this from the Welsh Language Commissioner.

A complaint was made from a member of the public about “key information about the Coronavirus is more recently available on the Council’s English language website (latest release on 17.07.2020) compared to the Welsh website (latest release on 04.07.2020).”

Screenshots were provided by the complainant to support their complaint.

As a result the communication team were given access to the corporate website to avoid any delay in updating the list of bulletins.
Evidence was also sent to the Commissioner.

A separate complaint was also made about a Covid-19 related article on the council’s news site which was “not available in Welsh at the same time and the English version – Link to news article from the corporate website went to the English article.”

This investigation was discontinued with the Commissioner finding that the council was under “immense pressure at the time with emergency public safety messaging being announced daily. The communications team have sent out a huge amount of important information over the past 12 months and continue to publish all articles and social media posts bilingually.”

One complaint was also made directly to Wrexham Council about the Welsh version of an address not on the Royal Mail address finder.

The local authority was advised that this is the responsibility of Royal Mail and to raise directly with them.

However Wrexham Council has since “improved the process for updating Royal Mail with any bilingual addresses we have on file.”

In a report due before councillors it is acknowledged that “more work needs to be done in a number of areas to ensure compliance” and that over the next 12 months there will be an “increased focus of the accuracy of literature and social media as well as on-going scrutiny our website and temporary signage.”

The report also repeats a claim that was in a report to the recent Executive Board:

The Welsh Language Commissioner contacted Wrexham.com asking for a ‘correction’ to our Executive Board article noting, “The Welsh Language Commissioner’s Office was the subject of a cyber attack on 10 December which had a significant impact on our operations. However, all our social media communications were active throughout and were not affected by the attack. In addition, through the hard work and dedication of our staff and the support of external agencies, our e-mail and telephone services were operational by Christmas. This ensured that the attack only had a short term impact on our external communications.”

We pointed out that the quote was from a council report that was still live, and asked if the report presented to councillors (and accepted by the Executive Board) contained incorrect information and if the council had been notified, as the report remained up. We had no reply.

The Scrutiny report will be considered by members of the customers, performance, resources and governance scrutiny committee at 10am on June 17. The meeting will also be streamed lived for public viewing on the Wrexham Council website.

UPDATE 18th JUNE 2021: Wrexham Council have been in touch to add, “We recently published a report that contained information about a cyber attack on the Welsh Language Commissioner’s office that was incorrect. It related to the Welsh Language complaints received by the council and considered by Executive Members on 8 June. We apologise for this inaccuracy and thank the Welsh Language Commissioner for bringing it to our attention.”

The Welsh Language Commissioner’s Office also note they were “….the subject of a cyber attack on 10 December which had a significant impact on our operations. All our social media communications were active throughout and were not affected by the attack.  In addition, through dedication of our staff and the support of external agencies, our e-mail and telephone services were operational before Christmas.  This ensured that the attack only had a short term impact on our external communications.”

“We can assure everyone that this did not affect the outcome of the meeting. We will continue to work across our departments and staff to promote and use the Welsh Language for the benefit of Welsh speakers and learners across the county borough.”