Carmarthenshire Council outlines plan to boost Welsh language
Carmarthenshire County Council’s Executive Board have given their backing to proposals to promote the Welsh language from a cross party working group formed last year.
The group was set up by the council after the 2011 census results were published showing that the number of Welsh speakers in the county had declined dramatically between the 2001 and 2011 census. Although there are still more Welsh speakers in Carmarthenshire than any other county in Wales, the decline in the number of Welsh speakers in the area was the biggest of any county in Wales during the decade between 2001 and 2011.
The working group of nine councillors received evidence and comments from a wide cross section of people and organisations before agreeing on 73 recommendations covering education, planning, business, youth and community engagement.
Chairperson of the working group, Cllr. Cefin Campbell said, “The future of the Welsh language is at a crossroad. The number of Welsh speakers in Carmarthenshire, and the percentage of the population who speak Welsh, has been in decline every decade since the Second World War. Most worrying is that for the first time, in 2011, the census showed that the proportion who speak Welsh in the county fell below 50 percent, and it is clear that urgent action is needed to arrest this decline and start the process of rebuilding the language. Our report sets out a package of measures which we hope will have a long term positive impact. I hope that this report will be seen, in years to come, as a real watershed in the fortunes of the Welsh language and will mark the moment when we managed to turn the tide and began to reverse the trend of decades of decline.
"As chair of the working group I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the members of the group for the way that we have worked together in coming to unanimous decisions, and also to the large number of people and organisations who came to meet us and / or submitted written evidence. Their input was vital in helping us to reach our conclusions.”
Vice Chair of the group, Cllr. Calum Higgins said, “The Welsh language is a vital part of the history, tradition and culture of Carmarthenshire. Many of the group’s recommendations deal with the role of our schools in ensuring that young people have the opportunity to learn Welsh. However, that is just the start of the process. We want to work with parents and young people to convince them of the benefits of a bilingual education and also encourage young people to see Welsh not just as the language of the classroom but as something that they use socially and long after they leave school and enter the world of work. We also want to urge employers to encourage the use of Welsh in the workplace and we have put forward a number of recommendations which will build on the county council’s role as an example of building a bilingual workforce.”
Council leader, Cllr. Kevin Madge said, “It is important to note that this report is the result of a cross party group which had an equal number of Labour, Independent and Plaid Cymru councillors in its membership. No one group can lay claim to the Welsh language and the language is too important for us to allow it to be caught up in political divisions.”
“I fervently hope that this report will make a real difference and allow us to safeguard Welsh as a living language which forms an important part of everyday life in our communities. I especially feel that education will be critical in safeguarding the future of the language. We are already making a huge investment in numerous Welsh medium schools, including a £14.6 million new school at Y Ffwrnes, an £8.25 million extension at Ysgol Y Strade and we are investing £18.4 million on improvements to the newly established Maes Y Gwendraeth secondary school. This report builds on that investment and I look forward to discussing these proposals with parents and governing bodies, to see how we can implement the working group’s proposals.
I believe the recommendations contained in the report will enable us to promote and develop the future of the Welsh language without creating unnecessary divisions in our community. We must take the whole community with us, and in many ways the future of the Welsh language depends more on non-Welsh speakers than it does on those of us who already speak the language.
As a local authority we have a duty to represent everyone in the county – Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers – and I believe this report strikes the right balance in doing just that. The challenge now will be to work with parents, school governors, local employers and community organisations to enlist their support for the ambitious and exciting proposals outlined in the report. I will be recommending to the council that we approve this report and that we invite local people to submit their views and their ideas as to how we can all work together from here on. This is the start of the process, not the end, and we have a lot of hard work ahead of us to turn around fifty years of decline.
"I also intend asking the working group to remain in existence and to take responsibility for monitoring the implementation of the report, ensuring that we see the various recommendations through to completion.”
Cllr. Mair Stephens, Executive Board member responsible for the Welsh language said, “One of our biggest challenges will be to continue to create good quality jobs for young people in the county. Although the population of Carmarthenshire has been growing, at the same time we are losing around 10,000 local people each decade, many of them younger people who go away to study and do not return, or who simply move away to find work. This is one of the main reasons that the number of Welsh speakers in the county has been declining.
"The impact of having young people learn Welsh in school is undermined if many of them then have to move away to find work. That is why last week’s announcement of S4C relocating their headquarters to Carmarthen was such a boost. We need to build on that good news by attracting and creating more new jobs in the media and creative industries, and in other business sectors too. I also hope that the Welsh Government will give further consideration as to whether more jobs could be decentralised and devolved out of Cardiff into communities such as Carmarthenshire.”
The report will now go before a meeting of the Full Council for adoption before being published.
The working group of nine councillors received evidence and comments from a wide cross section of people and organisations before agreeing on 73 recommendations covering education, planning, business, youth and community engagement.
Chairperson of the working group, Cllr. Cefin Campbell said, “The future of the Welsh language is at a crossroad. The number of Welsh speakers in Carmarthenshire, and the percentage of the population who speak Welsh, has been in decline every decade since the Second World War. Most worrying is that for the first time, in 2011, the census showed that the proportion who speak Welsh in the county fell below 50 percent, and it is clear that urgent action is needed to arrest this decline and start the process of rebuilding the language. Our report sets out a package of measures which we hope will have a long term positive impact. I hope that this report will be seen, in years to come, as a real watershed in the fortunes of the Welsh language and will mark the moment when we managed to turn the tide and began to reverse the trend of decades of decline.
"As chair of the working group I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the members of the group for the way that we have worked together in coming to unanimous decisions, and also to the large number of people and organisations who came to meet us and / or submitted written evidence. Their input was vital in helping us to reach our conclusions.”
Vice Chair of the group, Cllr. Calum Higgins said, “The Welsh language is a vital part of the history, tradition and culture of Carmarthenshire. Many of the group’s recommendations deal with the role of our schools in ensuring that young people have the opportunity to learn Welsh. However, that is just the start of the process. We want to work with parents and young people to convince them of the benefits of a bilingual education and also encourage young people to see Welsh not just as the language of the classroom but as something that they use socially and long after they leave school and enter the world of work. We also want to urge employers to encourage the use of Welsh in the workplace and we have put forward a number of recommendations which will build on the county council’s role as an example of building a bilingual workforce.”
Council leader, Cllr. Kevin Madge said, “It is important to note that this report is the result of a cross party group which had an equal number of Labour, Independent and Plaid Cymru councillors in its membership. No one group can lay claim to the Welsh language and the language is too important for us to allow it to be caught up in political divisions.”
“I fervently hope that this report will make a real difference and allow us to safeguard Welsh as a living language which forms an important part of everyday life in our communities. I especially feel that education will be critical in safeguarding the future of the language. We are already making a huge investment in numerous Welsh medium schools, including a £14.6 million new school at Y Ffwrnes, an £8.25 million extension at Ysgol Y Strade and we are investing £18.4 million on improvements to the newly established Maes Y Gwendraeth secondary school. This report builds on that investment and I look forward to discussing these proposals with parents and governing bodies, to see how we can implement the working group’s proposals.
I believe the recommendations contained in the report will enable us to promote and develop the future of the Welsh language without creating unnecessary divisions in our community. We must take the whole community with us, and in many ways the future of the Welsh language depends more on non-Welsh speakers than it does on those of us who already speak the language.
As a local authority we have a duty to represent everyone in the county – Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers – and I believe this report strikes the right balance in doing just that. The challenge now will be to work with parents, school governors, local employers and community organisations to enlist their support for the ambitious and exciting proposals outlined in the report. I will be recommending to the council that we approve this report and that we invite local people to submit their views and their ideas as to how we can all work together from here on. This is the start of the process, not the end, and we have a lot of hard work ahead of us to turn around fifty years of decline.
"I also intend asking the working group to remain in existence and to take responsibility for monitoring the implementation of the report, ensuring that we see the various recommendations through to completion.”
Cllr. Mair Stephens, Executive Board member responsible for the Welsh language said, “One of our biggest challenges will be to continue to create good quality jobs for young people in the county. Although the population of Carmarthenshire has been growing, at the same time we are losing around 10,000 local people each decade, many of them younger people who go away to study and do not return, or who simply move away to find work. This is one of the main reasons that the number of Welsh speakers in the county has been declining.
"The impact of having young people learn Welsh in school is undermined if many of them then have to move away to find work. That is why last week’s announcement of S4C relocating their headquarters to Carmarthen was such a boost. We need to build on that good news by attracting and creating more new jobs in the media and creative industries, and in other business sectors too. I also hope that the Welsh Government will give further consideration as to whether more jobs could be decentralised and devolved out of Cardiff into communities such as Carmarthenshire.”
The report will now go before a meeting of the Full Council for adoption before being published.
Comments