THE owner of an antiques firm near Ledbury lost £20,000 worth of business as a result of difficulties she faces after a telegraph pole was damaged.

Rosemary Ford, who runs Serendipity Antiques in Preston, said phone lines were damaged on January 5 and she, along with 15 other homes and businesses, has no landline or broadband as Openreach is yet to make repairs.

To make matters worse, Mrs Ford, 70, can only get a mobile phone signal outside, meaning she often works in the garden, and the unreliable phone signal meant a key bit of business fell through.

"It's cost me £20,000 this afternoon, I'm so upset I can't even begin to tell you," she said.

"I was supposed to be online bidding for a major piece of furniture for a client, and everything was on a delay and then we lost connection and we lost the major piece of furniture.

"I am so gutted, I can't tell you."

She added: "I am aware that Openreach is probably very busy, too busy, to contact us on numerous occasions, but the engineers who fixed the same problem last year were amazed the situation had been going on for five weeks before the temporary line was put in as they said they could have had it fixed in two days.

Mrs Ford said local children, elderly neighbours and businesses are "suffering" and she has reached her "wits end".

An Openreach spokesperson said: "We appreciate the disruption this must be causing but unfortunately there's no way of temporarily reconnecting the properties affected until the pole can be replaced.

"We're doing everything we can to replace the pole as quickly as possible but we need traffic management in place so the work can be done safely."

They added Openreach understands customers' frustrations, and apologised a repair was taking longer than it would like.