Wrexham LSB partners conducted a consultation in September/October 2015 to establish whether the current Equality Objectives were still relevant, needed amending or if anything should be added. 

Analysis of the consultation feedback confirmed that the Council should continue to focus on the existing Strategic Equality Objectives when implementing or further developing the Council Plan and the Strategies and Plan that underpin it.

There were two  main  themes with regard to the feedback.  Firstly, those choosing to contact the Council in Welsh via the contact centre stated that they were often disappointed that even though they opted for a Welsh language service that it was not available and that their call would be dealt with in English.  Secondly, the lack of availability of Welsh speaking officers to  deal with queries in Welsh in Council departments.  Many acknowledged that staff were answering phones bilingually but felt frustrated that they couldn’t then continue with the call in Welsh.  Even though officers were following the Council’s procedures with regard to dealing with calls in Welsh many of those who completed the questionnaire were dissatisfied with the lack of fluent Welsh speakers in the organisation

Since the survey was undertaken the Council has been served with its Final Compliance Notice from the Welsh Language Commissioner and the Standards have come into force. This has resulted in Welsh speaking customer service advisors being made available in the contact centre, both for dealing with customers face to face and over the phone.  With regard to Welsh speaking officers in the workforce the Council continues to seek opportunities to recruit Welsh language speakers and the introduction of the Standards has resulted in a strengthening and improving the Council’s recruitment procedures which in turn will hopefully result in more posts being advertised as Welsh essential and filled by Welsh speakers. The Council has recently updated its list of Welsh speakers and all staff have been made aware of how to deal with calls in Welsh and how to contact our internal Welsh speakers. The Council actively seeks to recruit Welsh speakers and has been using different techniques/methods in order to try and reach as wide a Welsh speaking pool of potential recruits as is can  and to provide as many opportunities as possible for Welsh essential posts to be filled by Welsh speakers.

In the 2016 play sufficiency survey 73% of children rated their satisfaction with their opportunities for play as ‘good’ or ‘great’, 19% rated it as ‘ok but in need of improvement’ and 8% rated it ‘not good or rubbish. This compares with 70%, 20% and 10% respectively in 2013, suggesting an improvement of 3% in overall satisfaction levels. However whilst the 2013 survey included all ages of children, the 2016 survey only involved 9 and 10 year olds (those in year five at school). If only the results from children aged 9 and 10 in 2013 are taken into account then the overall satisfaction levels have increased by more like 5%.

In contrast to children, 36% of parents in the 2016 survey rated their satisfaction with their children’s opportunities for play as ‘good’ or ‘great’, 34% rated them as ‘ok but in need of improvement’ and 30% rated them ‘not good or rubbish.’ This compares with 26%, 34% and 40% respectively in 2013, suggesting a 10% improvement in satisfaction levels.

The Welsh Government’s statutory guidance for completing play sufficiency assessments sets out nine ‘matters’ that need to be taken into account each containing a range of specific criteria that Wrexham must offer a progress report against. When considering the above re-developed priorities against each of these matters Wrexham’s second PSA identifies the following key ‘systems’, which together would enable the Local Authority and its partners to work towards securing sufficient opportunities for children’s play across the county borough:

Planning for Play

Playwork as Community Development

 Professional Development for Play

Play Development Team

 Policies for Play

Partnerships for Play

This is our annual consultation.

We are consulting on the Council's plans to reshape services and meet the financial challenge, by gathering public views on budget proposals for 2016/17 and beyond.

More than 1,700 people took part in the consultation and gave their views about the proposals we made, as well as making some suggestions of their own.

We'd like to thank everyone who took part for their time.

The results from the consultation were presented to Elected Members in order to shape the decisions they made about Wrexham County Borough Council's budget for 2016/17.

The 'You Said, We Did' report details what decisions have been made about each of the proposals presented for consultation.