Powys County Council is working to address a number of breaches of the Welsh Language Standards that occurred during the last year.

At a meeting of the cabinet on 10 June senior councillors received a draft annual report on the Welsh Language Standards at the council during 2024/2025.

The report, which needs to be agreed to allow it to be published on the council’s website by the end of the month which is a legal requirement, reveals that the council have been working to overcome several problems that have been reported to the Welsh language commissioner Efa Gruffudd.

Following complaints the commissioner investigated the council’s lack of publishing meeting agendas, minutes, and decisions in Welsh.

The report said that the council discussed “solutions and procedures” with the commissioner in the summer of 2024 which included using artificial intelligence (AI) to help with the translation process.

Further complaints were reported on this issue, and in December the commissioner found the council had committed further breaches.

The report said that the council had met the commissioner in January to “discuss solutions” to the document translation problem with a 12 month timetable agreed for implementing improvements.

Another complaint was made regarding the failure of simultaneous translation during a meeting,

It is expected that a councillor can speak at meeting in Welsh with their comments translated by an interpreter in real time to non-Welsh speakers.

The report said: “Due to an unexpected technical problem our simultaneous translation system failed at a council meeting.

“As a result, a councillor was unable to contribute in Welsh and made a complaint.

“This was a rare case which we investigated immediately.”

A review was conducted by the council’s ICT team, and they made some changes to the hardware in the hope that it will stop the problem happening again.