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Bedroom tax victims insulted by Creme Egg 'thank you' gesture

Bridgend housing association attempted to console hard-hit residents with sickly confectionery gift

Cash-strapped Welsh tenants hit by the bedroom tax have been offered a free Cadbury’s creme egg as a “thank you” gift for coughing up extra rent.

The Star can reveal that Bridgend housing association Valleys to Coast (V2C) offered the sickening Easter sweetener in a letter sent on Tuesday to residents of its 6,000 homes.

Head of neighbourhoods Nigel Draper thanked tenants for their “efforts to pay the shortfall” a year after the Tories slashed their housing benefit.

“V2C understands that this has been a challenging time and wants to recognise your payment efforts,” he wrote.

“As well as thanking you by letter we would also like to offer you a small thank you by offering a free creme egg should you call into the office during the month of April.”

The V2C tenant who blew the whistle on the letter branded it “totally disgusting.”

She told the Star: “I think it’s just an insult to offer you a creme egg.

“And they even want you to go and pick it up. They didn’t even post it out.”

The woman and her family are robbed of £14 every week because Tory rules state she must share a bedroom with her disabled partner.

And the family is forced to pay the sanction using his disability benefit.

“They think one bedroom is vacant although my partner is disabled and sleeps in it,” the tenant explained.

“I haven’t slept in the same room as him for four years and I’ve still got to pay it.

“He doesn’t sleep very well, he keeps me awake in the night but they say we could sleep together, that we haven’t got a choice.”

Another Bridgend tenant added: “The government are walking all over vulnerable people and a 69p Cadbury’s creme egg ain’t going to help them out.

“Our landlord should be helping — not insulting us! How out of touch are they?”

Campaigners from Cardiff and South Wales Against the Bedroom Tax have been helping both tenants make appeals.

V2C is among housing associations due to attend the campaign’s conference next month along with affected tenants and representatives of local councils and the Welsh government.

Campaign spokesman Jamie Insole said they will still work together to “weather this broken Tory policy.”

But he was clear “derisory incentives” like the creme egg giveaway will not help tenants.

“It is rare that one encounters anything so simultaneously bizarre and obscene,” he said.

“Solidarity between tenants and social landlords would be better expressed by real measures designed to assist tenants to beat the tax.”

The housing association defended its offer yesterday as an “important recognition” of tenants hit by the Tory tax.

A spokesman said its staff have helped over 200 tenants to make successful applications for discretionary housing payments to make up for lost housing benefit.

He said: “We always need to engage and keep the debate alive and the invitation to attend one of our regular walk-in sessions in Bridgend and pick up a free creme egg over Easter was a way of reminding tenants that even during the school holidays staff are available to help with financial advice.”

 

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