The number of Welsh speakers employed in Conwy County Borough Council jobs where the language is considered essential or desirable has seen a dramatic drop.

This year, less than half, just 48 per cent of people employed in such roles were Welsh speakers, down from 84 per cent two years ago.

The authority says it plans to change the way it advertises jobs in order to make up some ground – by introducing another category altogether which will class speaking Welsh as ‘advantageous’.

Where there are two equally qualified candidates, the deciding factor in who gets the job will be which one has the better Welsh.

Nia Llwyd Lewis, the council’s manager of Welsh language services, told councillors on the committee today that she feared potential job seekers were intimidated by the Welsh essential category.

Uwch Conwy Cllr Wyn Ellis Jones said that another way to improve recruitment would be to hire Welsh speakers and then train them up for the job they had been hired for.

He said: “It’s sometimes easier to employ someone who can speak Welsh and can be trained up to the level necessary for that job.”

He added he was worried that some jobs in schools were using the lower standard for Welsh when it came to recruitment, saying: “It concerns me that jobs that do require Welsh as an essential skill are being advertised as Welsh desirable.

"There was one instance of a school job being advertised this way.”Two years ago, 84 per cent of Welsh speakers were appointed to Welsh essential, advantageous and desirable posts. This fell to 68.5% of Welsh speaking staff appointed in Welsh essential and desirable posts in 2016-17.

This year, the percentage has fallen again to 48 per cent of staff.

Of the 105 posts advertised as being Welsh essential 92 of them have been filled.

In the 264 Welsh desirable posts 243 officers were recruited, of these, 68 spoke Welsh fluently.

The report included details of the council’s approach to the Welsh language.

Councillor Anne McCaffrey, the  cabinet member for democracy, law and

modernisation welcomed the report as a sign of the positive attitude the council had towards the language.

She said: “Conwy is proud to be a bilingual authority. And our teams have worked hard over the last year to achieve compliance with all 167 of the Welsh language standards. The annual monitoring report clearly evidences our ambition and determination to deliver further improvement across our services and our communities. I would like to recognise here the work of the translation service and the income they generate to support this council. The quality of their work and service delivery has earned them the status of preferred contractor of so many neighbouring councils and more recently of the Welsh Local Government Association.”