Following hot on the heels of the sacking of its Director of Corporate Affairs for insulting the Welsh (posts passim), comes news that frozen food giant Iceland is reviewing approach’ to bilingual signage in its Welsh stores.
The company had previously been criticised for its lack of provision of Welsh and English signage in stores, even attracting protests, such as one in Rhyl in 2018 reported by The Grocer.
At that time, Iceland was not exactly amenable to bilingual signage in its Welsh stores and even went so far as to issue a statement asserting its monoglot stance: “We do not currently provide signage in any language other than English in any of our stores in any part of the UK or Ireland.“
However, the company, which is based in Glannau Dyfrdwy (English: Deeside), had now announced this is changing, stating:
“We are currently reviewing our approach to providing Welsh signage in stores across Wales and updating this wherever possible. All new stores and those which are refitted have Welsh signage installed as standard, and this is also in place across all of our The Food Warehouse stores across Wales.”
The move has received support from Aled Roberts, the Welsh Language Commissioner, who has issued the following statement:
Research conducted by The Welsh Language Commissioner shows that customers in Wales want to see, hear and use the Welsh language in supermarkets in Wales. We have worked with a number of large supermarkets to develop their Welsh language services, supermarkets such as Coop and Lidl have responded brilliantly to develop a bilingual service. We would like to applaud their approach in working with us. We have contacted Iceland to inspire them to use Welsh, and encourage them to use bilingual signs, and we hope that they will respond to our request.