A COUNCIL’S ability to respond to queries in Welsh has been questioned by one of its own members. 

Councillor Tudor Thomas, a former member of Monmouthshire County Council’s ruling Labour cabinet, said the authority doesn’t have any senior officers or cabinet members who can operate in the language. 

He spoke out when the council’s place scrutiny committee was asked to consider a monitoring report on its strategic equalities plan. 

Cllr Thomas said he was a “little bit disappointed no mention is made of the Welsh language” in the document. 

He said: “If I rang Monmouthshire this morning and wanted to deal with something in Welsh very few people would be able to deal with it.” 

He added: “No one at a senior level can operate in Welsh, no one in the cabinet can. I think there is a weakness.” 

The Abergavenny Park ward councillor said he welcomed an increase in Welsh speakers working for the council. 

Pennie Walker, the council’s recently appointed equalities and Welsh language manager, said the Welsh Government requires councils to have separate reporting systems for their Welsh language standards, with that report due to be discussed at the performance and overview committee that afternoon. 

Ms Walker said she is due to take an intensive Welsh course. 

The Welsh language standards monitoring report recognised the telephone system at the council’s contact centre isn’t able to prioritise calls for Welsh speaking staff to handle. Instead they have to be answered by a pool of Welsh speaking officers rather than trained customer service advisors. 

Officers said improvements are being made. 

Fully funded Welsh language courses are also being taken up by an increasing number of staff across the council with 40 members of staff having registered in 2023/24, an increase from 32 in 2022/23. 

Efforts to increase the number of Welsh speaking applicants included advertising Welsh language essential posts, as well as some select Welsh language desirable posts, on Welsh language recruitment sites which was considered a success. 

Performance scrutiny committee chairman, Conservative Alistair Neill, asked if the council was aware whether advertising post as Welsh language “desirable” could discourage applicants from neighbouring counties in England.  

Independent councillor Meirion Howells suggested contact centre posts could be work from home and it could therefore recruit from areas such as Cardiff with a greater number of Welsh speakers. 

There are 176 standards applying to how the council uses Welsh intended to ensure it treats the language no less favourably than English. 

The report also states the council amended its street naming policy during the past year, following a complaint to and investigation by the Welsh Language Commissioner, after it stopped issuing bilingual name plates in 2021 for streets that previously had a name in just one language. 

The equalities report recognises people being able to fully access council services using Welsh as an aim and it has sought to recruit more Welsh speaking staff. 

It stated the council had approximately 649 vacancies in 2023/24, the period the report covered, and of those 24 were described as Welsh Essential (3.70 per cent) and 625 Welsh Desirable (96.3 per cent).