Cambridgeshire's public purse has forked out more than £1.5 million on translation costs over the past four years, the News can reveal.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary has been the biggest hit by the costs, spending £1.1m since 2011/12 on hundreds of agency interpreters.
A spokesman said: “The force manages language service requests in a way that minimises waiting times and saves money.
"We also have a number of multi-lingual support officers, from within local communities, who assist victims, witnesses and suspects.
"Many members of police staff are also multi-lingual and their skills are utilised where possible.”
Translation set Cambridgeshire County Council back around £340,000 over the same time frame. The bulk of the spending was for children’s social care, to support case work with families.
Cllr Joan Whitehead, chairman of the council’s children and young people committee, said: “The population of Cambridgeshire is increasingly diverse.
"Across the county 9.8 per cent of school children are from a minority ethnic community, with significant numbers from Indian, Bangladeshi and Gypsy, Roma traveller backgrounds.
“With this as our background, CFA recognises that it will need to continue to access interpreters and translators to deliver its statutory services effectively in support of children.”
Cambridge City Council spent around £25,000 over the same timeframe. Costs can include over-the-phone translation, as well as translating leaflets and other documents.
All those languages
Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Czech, Dutch, Farsi, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Kurdish Sorani, Latvian, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Malayalam, Polish, Portuguese, Pashtu, Russian, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Shona/bantu, Turkish, Thai, Tagalog, Urdu and Vietnamese, as well as British Sign Language.
No comments:
Post a Comment