How we celebrate the language of Welsh every day at Welsh Water

You may have already noticed that everything we publish into the public domain is in Welsh as well as English. Why? Well, as a company mainly based in Wales, we know how important Welsh is to those who live here. As one of the oldest languages in Europe, it’s key to the country’s culture, identity and tradition. It’s also important to us that our customers get the option to communicate with us in the language they are most comfortable. That’s why if you ring us up you can speak to our Welsh colleagues and if you visit our website you can read it in Welsh or live chat in Welsh with one of our team.

We offer all colleagues the chance to learn Welsh for free, with courses at beginner, intermediate and advanced level offered every year. With our Friday morning ‘Coffi a Chlonc’ (that’s coffee and a gossip for English speakers!) those learning Welsh can practise speaking to fluent Welsh colleagues.

Stephen Youell, Head of Emergency Planning and Security at Welsh Water is one of those learning Welsh as part of our beginners’ class: “I moved to Wales in late 2020 having lived in the South of England my whole life. Having never spoken Welsh previously, I wanted to learn the language for 2 reasons, the first was to correctly pronounce the towns, villages and of course our own sites, whilst the second was a number of our team speak Welsh and so I felt it was important to try and have some conversations with them.

“It’s great that Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water offer Welsh classes to colleagues and, whilst I do find the classes challenging, the sessions are fun and very interactive. As a few of us in the team are all taking the class it also means we can practice at team meetings with our Welsh speaking colleagues (and they say we are getting better!)”

And it doesn’t stop there. Strategically as a company Welsh is very important to us. We are proud that three of our executive colleagues (the most senior level within our company) are fluent Welsh speakers.

In fact, you may not know that one of our objectives, agreed with our regulator Ofwat for this investment period, is to increase the number of customers we have registered to receive correspondence from us in Welsh. This is believed to be the first target of its kind in the private sector in Wales and one we’re very proud of.

Pete Perry, CEO at Welsh Water, said: “As a company based mainly in Wales, the Welsh language is really important to us. But not only that, as a not-for-profit company we put our customers at the heart of everything we do. That’s why we’ve not only invested in Welsh language courses for our colleagues but have also invested a lot of money in ensuring all of our services and communications are available in Welsh for the 3.1 million people we serve in Wales.”

If you fancy listening to some Welsh language musicians, here’s a link to some Spotify playlists where you can discover new Welsh artists