AM Rhodri Glyn Thomas has picked up the Campaigner of the Year Award at this year’s Wales Politician of the Year Awards ceremony which took place in Cardiff’s City Hall last week.

The event, which aired on ITV Wales on Thursday, awarded Mr Thomas for his nine-month campaign to protect 330,000 Welsh households from cuts to council tax benefit.

Responsibility for council tax benefit was being devolved from the Westminster to the Welsh government but with a 10 per cent cut in the budget. This left a £22million black hole which Mr Thomas forced the Welsh Government to fill.

When the Welsh government maintained it could not plug the gap it raised the spectrre of over 19,000 Carmarthenshire households being forced to pick up the bill of Westminster cuts.

Rhodri’s nine-month campaign and the Welsh government’s mismanagement of the process resulted in the National Assembly being re-called during Christmas 2012 recess to pass legislation – the first time this had happened in the Assembly’s 13-year year history.

“We knew all along that it was a very important campaign which would have directly impacted some of the most vulnerable households in Wales," said Mr Thomas.

"That is why I was so determined to stick at the campaign and not take no for an answer."