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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Travel
Branwen Jones & Milo Boyd

Car park machine in Wales cause fury amongst tourists - because it's in Welsh

Holidaymakers in Wales have made complaints that they can't understand a car park's machine - because it's in Welsh.

People at the Caswell Bay area car park in Swansea gave up in exasperation because they thought the machine "wasn't working", one bemused onlooker said.

The instructions appeared in Welsh, but they could easily be switched to English, Wales Online reported.

People also complained that a pay and display parking ticket machine in Rhyl, Denbighshire supposedly only gave out instructions in Welsh.

Queues developed as non-Welsh speakers struggled to work out how to pay for their parking at Rhyl’s central underground car park near the promenade, which is administered by Denbighshire County Council.

Vehicles in the Caswell Bay car park (WalesOnline/Gayle Marsh)

Over the weekend, Paul Sambrook posted his experience in Caswell Bay on Facebook.

In the post, he explained that he had no problem with the machine's default language and in fact found it a "positive promotion" for the language.

Swansea Council has stated that a button allows users to change the language to English on their machine.

Mr Sambrook wrote: "The payment machine for car parking defaults to Welsh and quite a few people were giving up because they believed that the machine wasn’t working - they couldn’t make the card payment as they didn’t understand the instructions.

"None of them realised there is a 'change language' button, though to be fair the button has an icon on it, not words.

"I had no problem but a woman behind me observed that 'it was all in bloody Welsh'. Her daughter, age about 13, had no problem and could both read the Welsh and press the language change button for her.

"The lesson is that defaulting to Welsh is a positive promotion of the Welsh language - but they really need a clear instruction on them about how to change to English or any other language included - or the initial screen needs to be bilingual.

"I’m sure there’ll be a few people grumpy about the Welsh, but replacing the Welsh with English would be the worst thing - the majority of people did manage to work it out or could read the Welsh well enough."

In response to the complaints, a spokesman for Swansea Council said: "We take our Welsh language obligations very seriously, and like all local authorities in Wales we have bilingual parking machines and are required to ensure the default language should be Welsh.

"All our machines have instructions in English on how to change the language at the press of a button."

Over in Rhyl, tourists and some locals were left scratching their heads when a pay and display parking ticket machine only gave out instructions in the language.

In response to the complaints, a spokesperson for Denbighshire County Council said: "Our car parks team are looking into this issue.

"We would like to remind people that there is two other machines available in the Rhyl Central car park and people can use the pay-by-phone smartphone app with location code 804281 as an alternative way of paying.

"Our pay and display machines default to Welsh, but there is a large grey "language button" that people can press to change the language.

"This is explained on the machines; however, customer service management is also patrolling to assist customers on site."

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