FIVE homes in Coleford have been without a landline and internet connection for three weeks – but provider Openreach denies any awareness of faults despite an engineer working in the area.

Ran Morrison, who lives in Brecon Way in Edge End, contacted BT and TalkTalk about the problem and was reassured engineers would fix it.

Mr Morrison, who is disabled, says he relies on the internet to order his food shopping and banking.

He said: “One of my neighbours called Openreach who apparently said to him that an underground fault was to blame and it was onto the case. I originally reported a loss of service on my phone and broadband on September 7 and contacted them again last Tuesday to say the fault wasn’t fixed.

“It was only on Monday this week that a BT Openreach engineer visited my home and replaced the line and everything is working again.”

A spokesperson for Openreach said the company ‘definitely does not have any major cable breakdowns in the area at the moment.’

A spokesperson for TalkTalk added: “We have apologised to Mr Morrison for the loss of service. We escalated the work through BT Openreach to fix the phone line as quickly as possible. We can confirm the line is now working.”