A FAMILY have spoken of their anger at telecoms giant BT for leaving their 80-year-old mum without a phone line for the past five weeks.

Amanda Dreaden was frustrated after she, her brother and her niece rang BT numerous times to resolve the problem at the Boughton home of Jean Pope, who has vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s and is partially blind.

The lack of a phone line was particularly concerning as it meant Mrs Pope’s emergency button system, which is connected to the phone, had been out of action since just before her 80th birthday on March 28.

After the latest attempt to fix the problem failed on Monday, the family were told the earliest a BT engineer could next come round was Friday.

But after The Chronicle raised the issue with the telecoms firm on Tuesday, the phone line was repaired at 8am on Wednesday.

Mrs Dreaden said: “What if my mum fell and couldn’t use the cord because it didn’t work? It’s shameful companies like BT left it like this. Because of my mum’s Alzheimer’s, she asked my brother when he visited 20 times in an hour when the phone was going to be fixed.”

Mrs Dreaden was also angered at a suggestion from a member of the BT Emergency Welfare Service that Mrs Pope could temporarily move house to be with relatives.

She said: “It show how little awareness there is of dementia and Alzheimer’s – the last thing you should do is move as it’d leave her totally disorientated at this stage.”

A spokesperson for BT said: “BT would like to apologise to Mrs Pope for this delay and fully appreciates the inconvenience and distress this has caused.

“The fault was reported on April 2 and an engineer attended the following day to establish the fault was caused by damage to an underground cable near Mrs Pope’s home.

“Unfortunately there were no spare lines in that underground cable that could be used for Mrs Pope and so a completely new cable was required.

“Contractors needed to carry out the necessary excavations once permission for the dig was given by a nearby resident. That work has now been completed and an engineer was able to reconnect Mrs Pope’s line on Wednesday.”