Cultured Caerphilly County Borough Council employees speak a total of 26 languages in addition to English, according to a recent staff language audit.
A total of 664 staff speak or use a total of 26 languages, including Welsh, French, British Sign Language, German, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Braille, Dutch, Breton, Rumanian, Croatian, Greek, Kurdish, Makaton Sign Language, Maltese, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Hindi, Hungarian, Kishwahili, Malayalam and Nepali.
Of this figure, 332 members of staff speak Welsh.
Cllr Allan Pritchard, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Human Resources, Legal, Policy and Governance said, “We are committed to ensuring equal opportunities, treatment and access to all of our county borough’s residents, and I am delighted that we are such a culturally diverse workforce and have such a wide variety of languages at our disposal for the benefit of our residents”.
While in the 2001 census, the vast majority of residents in Caerphilly county borough classed themselves as White British or White Welsh, this information is now almost ten years old and therefore it is important to cater for the ever-changing environment in which we live.
Cllr Pritchard continued, “Although we actively encourage residents to correspond with us primarily in either English or Welsh, our residents are well within their rights to communicate with us in the language of their choice”.
“It is excellent that we have staff in our own organisation who are able to verbally translate information about council services such as recycling and waste, leisure and community facilities and benefits in a variety of languages should the need arise”.
