Amendments to our Welsh Language Policy

Our Welsh Language Scheme has recently been revised and was approved by the Welsh Language Commissioner on 19 March. The changes reflect our ambitious goals to grow the company across north and mid Wales, aiming to build 550 homes over the next 3 years. The revised scheme is now on the website and you can read it here.

We will continue to priorities our efforts to support and promote the Welsh language, by endeavouring to strengthen the language within our communities and the housing sector in general in Wales.

Ffrancon Williams, our Chief Executive said: “We are fully committed to ensuring that the culture of our workplace is Welsh, and that we offer all of our customers a quality service in the langue of their choice.

“We have worked with officers from the Welsh Language Commissioner’s Office to amend our Welsh Language Scheme to give us flexibility to support our growth strategy which support’s the Welsh Government target to build 20,000 new homes during their term in government. Many of these will be needed across north Wales and beyond to help fulfil the immediate need for housing. This means that the company is growing an expanding beyond the Welsh heartland of Gwynedd and we need our Welsh Language scheme to strike the right balance between the viability of the business and our language obligations. We operate in a competitive market, and these amendments were needed to enable us to carry out a language assessment on all new jobs. We are not weakening our policy, but it’s about giving us flexibility to ensure the viability of the business for the future. All our jobs which requires the Welsh language to be essential will remain this way.

“We are passionate about the Welsh language and we have invested time and resources to train and develop our staff’s language skills and we are proud that many of the officers who didn’t have these skills are now Welsh learners and have fully immersed themselves in our Welsh culture and respect the language.”