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Vandals leave hundreds without phone or internet

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AROUND 600 residents are without working phonelines or internet after vandals damaged an underground cable.

Those living in the Church Hill area of the borough alerted the Standard to the issue yesterday (Wednesday) after three underground cables were believed to be damaged at the junction of Easemore Road and Dale Road on Tuesday (January 29) morning around 11am.

It comes just months after wires were cut in Headless Cross causing weeks of misery for residents in that area.

A spokeswoman for BT Openreach said BT may not be the only network affected and engineers are working at the scene to fix the issue.

She said: "It is regrettable when Openreach suffers any kind of damage to its network.

"Our priority is to restore services as quickly as we can, which is what we are doing."

"One of the cables isn’t quite as badly damaged as the other two, so I am first of all trying to ascertain how quickly the first customers might have their services restored.

"It is too early in the whole repair process to give a precise timescale. But to stress that the nature of the repairs means customers will have their lines back on gradually, rather than in one go."

She added she urged anyone who saw anything suspicious to contact the police and a reward may be given.

Anyone with any information should call Redditch Police on 101 quoting crime reference number 97-N-300113 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

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