RESIDENTS of Bowson Road in Bream have now waited two weeks to have a new telegraph pole installed and phone lines reconnected after a huge ancient oak tree fell with such force that it ripped the wires out of people’s homes.

We reported on the damage, which occurred on Tuesday, November 22, in last week’s paper and resident Roger Davies was less than happy with the response BT gave us.

Mr Davies said: “The tree fell with such force that it wrote off my car. I had a cheque from my insurance company within a few days but the telegraph pole is still down and all the cables are still piled up by the side of the road. Our internet is out due to the phone lines being down and there’s no mobile signal locally. My wife is waiting for an urgent appointment from the hospital but they have no way of getting through. I have to drive away from the house to communicate with anyone – and to ring BT.

“BT has been telling TalkTalk customers that they need to talk to them, even though it’s BT who is responsible for the telegraph pole and the lines. I’ve been ringing them every day and they even told me I should talk to my service provider but, in my case, that’s also BT.

“One of my neighbours had a visit from a BT engineer who said he was there to reconnect the phone line. My neighbour pointed at the broken telegraph pole and asked him what exactly he planned to connect it to.”

Emma Tennant, spokes­person from BT, said: “Unfortunately pole work can often be quite an involved process, involving different stages and different teams. The poling work is due to be completed today (Wednesday), but this sort of repair comprises different stages.

“Once the new pole is in place, work to reconnect the customers’ individual wires will then be carried out as soon as possible. It is regrettable when Openreach suffers any kind of third party accidental damage to its network, and every effort is being made to complete the repairs as quickly as possible.

“In the meantime, Openreach advises those people affected to contact their communications provider – the company they pay their bill to – to see if they can arrange for incoming calls to be diverted to an alternative number of their choice, while the repair work is going on.”