Merge Councils – Lose the Language? (And some other comments )

Opened the computer this morning, hands shaking, what will be the outcome of the Williams report for merging councils, in particular about Ceredigion? I'm so sad like that, and perhaps I should get a life! But ...
The main suggestion , certainly according to the BBC , includes merging Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire County! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-25776603) Something that I never expected; many were talking about the re - birth of the old Dyfed County Council, uniting Ceredigion , Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire . It was felt that the last time this jurisdiction was far too large , for example Aberystwyth is almost 50 miles from Carmarthenshire County Council Hall , where the meetings were held , and the voice of Ceredigion, as a county that is unique in Wales, was drowned . Under the new system , it perhaps looks worse ! The headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council are in Haverfordwest, which is over 60 miles from Aberystwyth . According to Traveline Cymru , it takes at least 2 hours 52 minutes to travel from Aberystwyth to Haverfordwest on two buses . In my opinion, local politics is less effetive when it is far from local people , and I would like to see governance become more local rather than more distant .

But for the Welsh language, the situation is very fragile . Recently , efforts have taken place to increase the use of Welsh in the County Council , and there were high hopes that Ceredigion County Council would follow the example of Gwynedd and make the Welsh language of administration of the County Council , that is, do all their work in Welsh and then send communications to translators to make them bilingual . In Gwynedd, it is fairly widely recognized that this has done a lot to reduce the fall in Welsh speakers, and strengthened the language around Caernarfon , where the council offices are. That would be natural and extremely helpful in a county where there is a massive linguistic crisis but still almost half the population speak Welsh.
But in Pembrokeshire, only 19 % of the population speak Welsh. When I calculated the percentage of Welsh speakers in the new jurisdiction, using data from the 2011 census, 30 % speak Welsh :

	Population	Number of Welsh speakers	Percentage who speak Welsh
Pembrokeshire	118,392	22,786	19.2%
Ceredigion	73,847	34,964	47.3%
Penfrodigion	192,239	57,750	30.0%

Whilst understanding that 30 % speaking Welsh is still a significant number , this is concerning, for the use of the Welsh language in the council. Assuming that Council employees will emulate the population in its entirity, I think probably we'll see less of Welsh as a language of administration , with negative consequences for the use of Welsh in all areas .

Another danger is the trends to centralise everything , and the natural tendency for the largest partner in any such 'relationship' is to try to arrange everything on his own terms . As shown in the table above , Pembrokeshire County has a much higher population than Ceredigion , and so I think it is likely that the majority of the senior officers will come from PCC , with all their old habits (of course, I would not expect anything different from anyone!) , and it will be natural for them to try to keep their departments in Pembrokeshire , where they are already . It is possible that such trends could reduce the opportunities in Ceredigion , the Welsh-speaking areas and especially in Aberystwyth town and the surrounding area. Aberystwyth has seen economic benefits due to the change from the Dyfed system to Ceredigion, including the establishment of the Council offices on Boulevard St Brieuc , and it would be tragic if the local government re -organization jeopardised this by moving "the middle" much further away .

The two councils have different attitudes towards education also . Only about a week ago , Pembrokeshire County Council refused to open a second Welsh-medium secondary school in the county http://www.golwg360.com/newyddion/addysg/133941-sir-benfro-dim-cytundeb-ar-ysgol-uwchradd-gymraeg-newydd Currently , young people from southern Pembrokeshire are expected to travel to Preseli School in North Pembrokeshire . That is quite different from the arrangements in Ceredigion , where several Welsh Secondary school has acted very beneficial for years, and where the English-medium secondary school is the exception . There is therefore a need to ensure that Pembrokeshire's education policies and attitudes do not negatively influence Ceredigion .

This wasn't the only time in recent weeks for PCC to reach the headlines for the wrong reasons . According Golwg360 ( http://www.golwg360.com/newyddion/cymru/134353-dim-angen-cymraeg-swyddi-gofal ) , there was a web page that emphasized : "Welsh is only spoken as a first language in some parts of north Pembrokeshire . English is the internal language of the council, so no need to worry if you are not bilingual. " (translated by me from Golwg360) Such attitudes make me feel extremely uncomfortable , especially since a lot of attention has been paid lately to the importance of Welsh in social care .

So , how does the report consider the Welsh langauge? Reading parts of it , the aspect of the report appertaining to the Welsh language looks promising, for example on page 92 it says:
“We have been particularly mindful of issues around the Welsh language. Several of our respondents urged us to propose boundaries that reflected and sustained public use of Welsh as well as the use of the language as a medium of civic life and administration. We believe all of our proposed options do so;...”
That sounds very promising but how does that compare the situations of Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire? Use of the language as a medium for civic life - as already seen , the percentage of Welsh speakers in Pembrokeshire is much smaller than in Ceredigion. The above examples of the actions and words of Pembrokeshire County Council suggests that there is much less use of Welsh in the use of language as a medium for administration : as they themselves say , " the council's internal language is English .. . " But in Ceredigion , much more Welsh is used in the administrative arrangements (though not enough in my view)
So the question is raised : how does the recommendation to merge Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire fit with the considerations of the Welsh language on page 96?

All in all, a lot more consideration of issues is required before merging any Welsh councils. It is also strange that the emphasis has been on merging units that the Welsh government accuses of some sort of failure (by the fact that they are re - structuring) . Since a while, Westminster and the Welsh Assembly have split Pembrokeshire in half separating the more Welsh-speaking part and the more English-speaking part. And it's worth remembering that before 1997 there was a seat in Westminster for Ceredigion and North Pembrokeshire . It may be worth merging several Welsh-speaking area around Mid and West Wales with Ceredigion county council to create a Welsh stronghold to the south - west, which, hopefully, administrate in Welsh , at least to a large extent . Adam Price has also suggested a large council in the west - Arfor - Welsh-speaking communities would be able to pull together and spread good practice, by including Gwynedd, and to formulate policies for the Welsh to Welsh-speaking heartland . (http://www.renew.plaidcymru.org/uploads/Arfor_English_Final.pdf) Significantly, Pembrokeshire was excluded from this, although some suggested that Preseli could possibly join . The idea of Arfor also makes Aberystwyth quite central : under Dyfed council it was said there had been a tendency for investments etc. go south, and Mid-Wales was forgotten . There are also concerns about centralisation in the Hywel Dda health trust, with frequent worries and downgrading at Bronglais. I fear that this could be the future of Ceredigion , and especially North Ceredigion, if southern county / counties dominate local government administration here. Alun Williams has written a great blog on this subject ( http://bronglais.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/wales-needs-middle.html )

Certainly, a lot more consideration on the linguistic and economic needs of Ceredigion is required before jumping in to any restructuring .