CROSSED phone lines have been causing confusion in a village near Worcester.

People living in Hallow have been picking up calls meant for their neighbours while one man said his phone number had inexplicably changed overnight.

Mike Finn, who lives on Main Road, said: "It's been a real nuisance.

"I lost my internet, then I picked up the phone to phone someone and realised I'd got no phone line.

"It's all a bit random at the moment and the internet is virtually unusable."

Mr Finn said: "Everybody that calls me gets the pub, The Crown.

"My neighbour said he was getting the calls for the local councillor, Dean Clarke, and was picking up calls from locals moaning about things they wanted the council to sort out.

"Their calls were apparently mixed up."

Mr Finn reported it to his provider, Talk Talk, but said he was told the problem is to do with cabling and needs to be solved by Openreach, the company that maintains local networks on behalf of all providers.

His phone line was restored today (Friday) after the Worcester News contacted Openreach.

Cllr Dean Clarke, of Parkfield Lane, said he had been without his phone for three days but it was fixed after he contacted provider BT.

He believes that some villagers have been suffering from the problem for two weeks.

He said: "It's strange. It seems to have gathered pace.

"My understanding is somebody came up and did a job to put in faster broadband at the local exchange and did the wrong job and cross-connected everybody.

"I was without email and phone for about three days which was quite relaxing actually.

"It's quite a funny situation but you would have thought they would have recognised that in the area there were a lot of people having problems and would have dealt with that.

"They seemed more interested in telling me we would have to pay £129 if it wasn't their fault."

A spokesman for Openreach said today (Friday): "Openreach engineers are working on site today to put things right.

"They have received 10 faults so far.

"If anyone thinks they have been affected by this problem, they need to report a fault to their service provider – the company they pay their bill to – so it can be investigated by Openreach.”