THE leader of Wrexham Council has resisted calls to dismiss his deputy from a senior role over errors in Welsh language translations.

The local authority has come under fire in the last year after receiving 34 complaints amid a catalogue of failures.

They included inaccuracies in council tax bills and parking signs at country parks having to be replaced because of mistakes.

Fresh calls were made this week by language campaigners for Conservative Hugh Jones to be removed from his executive board role.

Cllr Jones, who carries responsibility for ensuring the council provide services bilingually, has been strongly criticised by members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society).

They called for the responsibility to be transferred to someone else after they accused him of presenting inaccurate information in a report on the authority’s performance in catering for Welsh speakers, which was presented to other senior councillors on Tuesday.

Aled Powell, Wrexham county chair of the society, said: “It’s disgraceful that the council continues to publish statistics it knows to be misleading and which hide the true use of Welsh.

“Unfortunately, continuing to operate knowingly, causing prejudice or harm suggests anti-Welsh attitudes within the authority.

“Other elements of Cllr Jones’ report appear to be efforts to hide the true nature of failures.

“The report lists investigations by the Welsh Language Commissioner into all the authorities alleged failings but neglects to acknowledge every case where a decision has already been reached and enforcement steps have been placed on the council.”

Mr Powell said the report claimed 150,000 people chose to communicate with the council in English in 2018-19, despite the population of the county borough being lower.

Meanwhile, it said only 15 individuals contacted it using Welsh, even though it was admitted at a previous meeting that some emails sent from the public in the language were wrongly being counted as English.

Cllr Jones, who represents Rossett, has previously come under fire for claiming Portuguese and Polish were more commonly spoken than Welsh in Wrexham.

The council was also accused of exaggerating the cost of complying with the Welsh Language Standards brought in by the Welsh Government in 2016.

However, council leader Mark Pritchard (Ind) has defended the work of his colleague, who decided to learn Welsh after taking on the role.

In response to Mr Powell’s comments he said: “I commended the lead member for his work in this role and his commitment to the Welsh language at executive board earlier this week, and continue to have every confidence in him and support him in his role.”

During the meeting Cllr Jones admitted errors had been made by the council in the last 12 months but also said it had made good progress and been successful in recruiting to Welsh job roles.