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Once-thriving Welsh-speaking communities continue to die out as local people seek work and affordable housing elsewhere

STATISTICS can be selectively chosen to make any kind of point. Take the Welsh language, for example. The 2001 census showed that the number of people who speak Welsh had risen significantly, and that trend will no doubt continue in the statistics of the next census as well.

The demand for Welsh-medium education is higher than it has ever been, even outside the traditional Welsh-speaking areas. Adult Welsh classes are filling up all over Wales, and Welsh is even a language of government these days, enjoying (in theory, at least) equal status with English on the floor of the Senedd Siambr. Surely anyone can see that the Welsh language has been saved? The erosion of the language has been stopped in its tracks, and the position of the language is now stronger than it’s been for many decades. That much is obvious, right?

Well actually, no. That’s only half the story. There are more people who speak Welsh, it’s true, but the survival of Welsh depends on its use as a community language. Most communities where Welsh is the majority language are being diluted by monoglot English-speaking incomers, which threatens the status of Welsh as a community language.

In many of our coastal and rural areas young people often cannot afford to stay in their communities, as they are generally priced out of the housing market and often have poor employment prospects. Their only choice is to leave to find work and affordable housing, and their place is taken by incomers who can afford the houses but don’t speak Welsh. Then the linguistic nature of the community gradually (or not so gradually, in some cases) changes as more and more people there speak only English, and less and less speak Welsh. It doesn’t take long before the linguistic make-up of the community has changed to the extent that the default language of the community is English. When the Welsh language ceases to be the language of the community as most of the people there don’t speak it, it is in danger of dying out. Within a generation it will be effectively dead in that community.

Even worse – many of the houses in the community are not only bought by outsiders, but are just used as holiday homes. There are villages and streets in parts of Wales that are almost empty outside of the tourist season, while locals have been displaced because they can’t afford to live there. How can this be right or fair?

The Welsh language now is under more threat than it has ever been. To many people in Wales, this is unacceptable. So what can be done to arrest the decline?

The Government should put tighter restrictions on the housing market, to take both language and local economic issues into account. The emphasis in new development should be on building affordable houses for local people, rather than the current practice of building a token percentage of affordable housing as part of larger developments aimed primarily at wealthy incomers. Local authorities should also be able to place restrictions on the number of people from outside the area who are allowed to move in and buy houses, to give the advantage back to local people. This policy would help rural communities in both Welsh and English-speaking areas, so it’s not something that would need to be introduced purely on linguistic grounds.

Tied in with this would come the necessary powers to enforce this policy with estate agents who would otherwise seek the largest profit over the good of the communities in which their housing stock is situated.

In considering any planning applications in rural Wales, particularly in tourist areas, it should be a requirement that planning authorities must consider the impact of any mooted housing development on the linguistic make-up of the community. Again, emphasis should be on local homes for local people, and taxes on second homes should be much higher than on main residences, to discourage people from buying holiday homes.

The right to buy council houses should be abolished, to avoid further erosion of the social housing stock available in Wales. More properties should be made available for young families to rent in their local area. Money should be invested in the building of new housing stock specifically for local people to rent.

Job creation should, of course, be a priority. This means encouragement for new companies and industries (or new branches of already existing ones) to locate in areas of Wales outside the M4 and A55 corridors. People will only stay in their communities if there are sufficient employment opportunities within easy reach of those communities. In order to make more of Wales accessible and therefore more able to attract and sustain businesses, better north-south transport links would be required. This would ideally include a direct rail route and improved road links.

In short, the needs of Welsh communities and the people living in them should take preferences over those of holiday home buyers and other incomers.

Of course, there are those who would see all this as unnecessary. Some of them would claim to be in favour of saving the Welsh language (though many would not even go that far) but not at the expense of changes in the housing market. What we need to consider is this: once the Welsh language is gone, it will be gone forever. Once Welsh-speaking communities are eroded away to the point of nothingness, we cannot bring them back. If Welsh is to survive as anything other than an academic interest or a part-time hobby for learners, radical action is needed now to preserve its status in those communities in which it is still (for now) the majority language. Otherwise we will have lost one of our greatest treasures for all time, and it will be nobody’s fault but our own.

- For more information, visit Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg.