I accept this can be a difficult area with escalating costs, lack of budget, lack of awareness lack of skills etc but it is an area of statutory responsibility.
the following link to the CRE website looks at thew race equality duty which CAN include translation and interpreting services.
http://www.cre.gov.uk/duty/pa_specific_access.html
Interestingly if you look at the Welfare reform green paper on the DWP website (just an example) there is some text at the bottom that states:
” Alternative versions of the Green Paper and the consultation report are available in a variety of formats (including hard copy, audio, Braille, Easy Read, large print and Welsh versions). These can be ordered by contacting the Welfare Reform Team.”
I don’t really see any difference between that sort of approach which seems to be the norm across a whole range of products including virtually everybody’s HB/CTB websites, and the provision of translation/interpretation services in community languages.
I would suggest using http://www.languageline.co.uk/ as many LA’s, Voluntary sector and Government depts do.
I don’t say this to embarass you hannah (and I assume you work for Boston) simply so that you can use it to argue your point locally. It looks from your website as though your borough has a translation and interpretation service and offer on the front page of your website a translation tool that covers the major european languages, japanese and Korean (why those I don’t know and our webmarshal software stops me from trying it). It also has on it a published “generic equality scheme” that refers specifically to HB/CTB correspondence.
I think part of the problem with this is LA’s saying that they will do all sorts of things to meet their statutory duties and not doing it or making provision (budgets, resources/training etc) to make sure it happens when required.
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