A villager is furious it took BT engineers more than a week to fix a phone pole she claimed was dangerous.

A tree fell on the line at Fernham Road, Fernham, near Faringdon, during the night on Monday, February 26, but nobody came to replace the damaged pole until Wednesday, March 7.

Nikki Horsey, who lives opposite the pole, first called BT at 9.20am on February 17 and spoke to officers every day since. A number of households were also without phone connections.

She said: "The fact is we were telling them it was dangerous and it was very precariously balanced.

"The way it was leaning over, if two trucks had passed at that point one of them would have clipped it and it would have come down. So, I am very relieved it has been fixed.

"I had taken to not coming down that way, so has my neighbour, because we were so worried it would fall and hurt someone.

"Nobody has bothered to phone us to let us know what was happening, even though we were ringing up and saying it was dangerous."

Engineers from BT inspected the pole shortly after it was damaged and said they thought it was safe.

But it was not until a week later, after Mrs Horsey had contacted the county council highways department, who visited the site and said the pole was unsafe that workmen arrived to replace it.

BT spokesman Emma Littlejohn said: "It was tested by a pole tester and even though it looks like it was leaning they did decide it needed to be replaced, but it wasn't dangerous. We would normally have replaced it before now anyway, but we have been quite busy and we believed it to be safe.

"We were aware of the customer's concerns and we decided we needed to get out there as soon as we could and after the next phonecall we managed to get a team out. Even though we thought it was safe we want people to feel safe and secure."