Full credit to Councillor Andrew Day, of Chessington North and Hook, for his help in resolving an issue that began on January 28, when, we believe, contractors working for Thames Water damaged a BT cable under the pavement outside a garage in Hook Road.

Why they never told BT at the time, so that the damage could be repaired, remains a mystery, but, apparently, they just fixed the burst pipe, filled in the hole and went away.

This resulted in a loss of services to a number of houses and, although the cause was identified the following day, after six weeks nothing had been done to fix the problem and repeated calls to and from the BT call centre only resulted in a string of broken promises and lame excuses as to why this problem could not be resolved.

On Monday, March 8, I received the latest in a long line of updates, informing me that the next date for the work to be completed was March 30.

I agreed with the caller that I would wait just two more days until he had the results of a promised review.

I also pointed out that this was now an unacceptable situation and that it would be escalated if not resolved very soon.

The current delay was apparently due to the work having to be done when the garage was closed – 10pm to 6am – and a noise assesment needed to be carried out.

I tried to explain to the BT caller this meant that the work would never happen, as the residents would not enjoy the sound of drills between 10pm and 6am.

Another affected neighbour decided that enough was enough and contacted Mr Day to beg for help.

I have no idea how he did it, but by 2pm on Monday, BT had overcome all of the difficulties and repaired the cable, and service was restored.

KEITH SAUNDERS
Chessington