A GROUP of Menston residents are fed up and angry after being without a telephone service for almost three weeks.

Several villagers living on Buckle Lane and Oakridge Avenue, near the Bradford Road junction, have not had a landline service since Tuesday, September 13, when BT reported that a vehicle had collided with one of the company's telegraph poles.

Tina and Jon Clarke, both 39, who live on Oakridge Avenue, were picking their children up from school when the accident happened at the top of their street at the Buckle Lane junction.

Mrs Clarke said: "It was a horse wagon. We heard the bang and saw the line go down. When we came back home, we saw the driver talking to four people from BT."

And for the Clarkes and other residents in the area being without regular phone service has been an inconvenience. Mrs Clarke, who broke her foot 14 weeks ago, had been doing her supermarket shopping online with Tesco and then having it delivered.

But when the phone service went down so did her internet connection, which also affected a part-time job that she was doing from home and affected her husband's business is office based but often relies on making calls from home.

Katherine Robertshaw, 22, who lives on Buckle Lane, said that being without the internet and a landline phone has also affected her business, the Menston Performing Arts Club, which she runs from home.

She said: "The mobile bills are through the roof. Everyone's very fed up and angry on the street."

A spokesman for BT said many people with mobile phones who lived in the area could have their landline calls diverted to their mobile, an option which many residents had taken up.

Gwen Smith, 72, of Buckle Lane, said: "We have a mobile, but the reception is very poor on our network. A lot of other people are in the same situation." Mrs Clarke added: "It doesn't work unless you're sitting outside or in your car."

She said even though BT were now diverting calls to the mobile, the company did not offer the service right after the accident happened.

"Normally when something like this happens they offer you it, but I had to ring them up."

Residents living in the area were also annoyed that BT did not promptly notify them of the problem. Mrs Smith said: "You would have thought they would put a note through our letterbox."

After two-and-a-half weeks, BT began work on putting up a new telegraph pole last Friday. A spokesman from the company explained why the process took so long.

He said: "In order to safeguard our engineers while they make the necessary repairs and reconnect the lines, a traffic management system is required on site. This in turn requires statutory notice to be given to (Bradford) Council before its deployment."

Although the spokesman was unable to give a completion date, he said this week: "We finished replacing the pole yesterday, but the engineers are still working to restore service. It's very unfortunate when we suffer this kind of third party damage. It's regrettable that it's taking a little longer than we had hoped, but we are asking customers to bear with us."