How Welsh Language Standards affect Cardiff public sector quotes and version control

What to take away

Do Cardiff suppliers need bilingual quotes?

Short answer: not by law, but often by contract. The standards made under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 apply to public bodies in Wales. They do not bind a private supplier directly.

What reaches you is the buyer's own duty. A Cardiff public body must treat Welsh and English equally in its services. That duty shapes what it puts into a tender or contract notice.

So the real question is not whether the law names you. It is whether the contract requires Welsh-language outputs, sign-off or support. If it does, your quote must show that scope in both languages.

The UK public procurement policy guidance sets transparency, fair treatment and value for money rules that sit alongside the standards.

These questions Edinburgh legal buyers ask cover the document control points Cardiff buyers also raise.

What Cardiff public bodies ask for in a tender

Cardiff hosts the Welsh Government, Cardiff Council and a wide set of arm's length bodies, all working under the standards. Three requests recur in their tenders.

The third is a document control test, not a translation test. A weak answer suggests your version control is manual.

Creative agencies in Cardiff often meet this first, because campaign and design assets are visible to the public in both languages.

The Welsh Language Commissioner can investigate complaints about public bodies. That gives the standards force, and cautious buyers pass that caution down to suppliers.

Use a proposal software quality checklist to show both variants were checked before issue.

Example: a bilingual quote for an £80,000 Cardiff contract

The figures below are illustrative, not a real bid. A Cardiff agency tenders for a public body contract worth £80,000, and the ITT asks for Welsh and English quotes.

The live Welsh column would carry Welsh field labels. Both files share release 3 and one issue date. If scope changes, the agency reissues both as release 4.

Five steps that keep both variants linked

A word processor lets you save two files. A quoting tool links them to one data set, so a price change lands in both outputs at once.

Version control, BS 10008 and BS ISO 10007

Two standards carry most of the weight here, and they cover different ground.

BS 10008 deals with electronic document management and the integrity of electronic records. It helps you show which language variant is the record of truth.

BS ISO 10007 is the configuration management standard. It asks you to define configuration items, control changes and record approvals.

Apply both by treating each language version as a configuration item under one release. The Welsh and English files then move together or not at all.

If revision C exists in English and revision B in Welsh, the buyer cannot tell which price to trust. Two files on a shared drive will not stop that. A tool with a release gate will.

Running this without friction is covered in the operating workflow without bottlenecks article.

Common questions

Do private suppliers in Cardiff have to follow the Welsh Language Standards?

No. The standards apply to public bodies, but those bodies pass requirements into contracts and bids, so you may still need Welsh and English documents.

What should I ask a quoting software vendor to demonstrate?

Ask for a language-variant field and a release gate. Test whether a quote can be issued while one language version is still in draft.

How do I prove version control in a public sector bid?

Keep a log of releases, approvals and issue dates, and use one reference number for both variants.

What happens if the Welsh and English quotes differ?

The buyer may seek clarification or question the bid's reliability. Align both variants before you submit.