A COUPLE have been handed £5,000 damages by Test Valley Borough Council after a letter libelling them was published on the authority's website.

TVBC bosses agreed the payment after the unnamed couple were subjected to online abuse over a planning application.

The couple, who are both transgender women, had applied for retrospective permission for security cameras they had installed on their semi-detached home after it was targeted by paint throwing vandals who caused £12,000 damage to the property.

But angry neighbours in their picturesque Test Valley village objected and letters written by them were published on Test Valley Borough Council’s website.

It was part of a campaign of terror against the couple who said the abuse was part of a “witch hunt”.

Some of the letters included claims concerning young children playing outside and in nearby gardens.

But one was so “nasty” that the couple hired a solicitor to ensure it was taken offline and council were forced to pay damages admitting it should never have been published.

One of the women, a company director who did not want to be identified, is reported to have said: “The abuse had just escalated. It’s been awful. All we want is to live a quiet life.

“We have had stink bombs thrown at our car, paint and condoms thrown, our garage door dented with pellet bullets, cars parked in such a way that it is impossible to get into our car.

"The police say they can’t do anything as there is no evidence it’s a hate crime but it’s pretty obvious why this is happening.

“We are both transgender. That is really the only difference between us and other people. Our solicitor described it as a witch hunt.”

Test Valley Borough Council confirmed damages had been paid in an out of court settlement.

A council spokesman refused to name the person who received the pay-out, which was awarded in June 2014 through the authority’s public liability insurance.

He confirmed that they paid an excess of £1,000 to insurance provider, Zurich, to award the compensation package.

The spokesman added: “The council inadvertently published a third party letter on its website which contained libellous content relating to a planning application.”

Previously they have refused to say how the content was published but leader of Test Valley Borough Council, Ian Carr, said the letter “slipped through the net”.

“It certainly shouldn’t have been published. It was accidental,” he said.

But the couple said they didn’t want to go for the individual who wrote the letter because “it would be a long, drawn out process and the only real winners in such situations are the lawyers”.

Cllr Carr dismissed their actions saying the council was “the easy target” adding that the couple had gone for the public purse instead.

“It wasn’t us that wrote it. It wasn’t our words,” he said. “The people who wrote it are at fault.”

He added that procedures involving planning applications had been “tightened up” at the council.

The couple, who have been together for more than 20 years, said they had been briefly targeted at their last address too and were now thinking about moving again.