A 96-year-old was left unable to contact her relatives or ring an emergency buzzer for nearly a week because of a fault with a BT cable.

Joyce Hastilow, of Colchester, has a personal alarm which allows her to contact the emergency services if she has an accident – but with the alarm linked to a BT phone cable.

Mrs Hastilow was left wary of her every move in case she had a fall and was unable to contact anybody for help.

Geraldine Howells, Mrs Hastilow’s daughter, was also uncontactable because the cable fault affected the landline telephone which Mrs Hastilow relies on to stay in touch with her family.

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Mrs Howells, 64, said she was appalled with the lack of action from BT after she repeatedly contacted them to fix the cable as a matter of urgency.

She said: “I was absolutely disgusted.

“She couldn’t contact anyone – she has a good neighbour, but not everyone is lucky enough to have that.

“It was put through to BT as an emergency and it took them six days [to fix the issue].”

The telephone line first broke last Wednesday, with Mrs Howells first realising there was a problem when she phoned her mum, only to find the line was constantly engaged.

The issue wasn’t rectified until the following Tuesday.

“I contacted BT at 6pm on the Wednesday evening and they kept saying ‘it will be done today’, but they didn’t start work on it until the Monday.

“I’m disgusted with the whole thing.”

“My mum has mini strokes and is prone to falling – if she had fallen, no-one would have known.

“People need to be made aware of situations like this.

“We’re only able to go away [on holiday] because she’s got the alarm – if it happened to someone without family, it’s scary.”

When contacted about the matter, a BT spokesman apologised for the incident.

He said: “We apologise for any inconvenience caused to Ms Hastilow due to a fault in our supplier’s cable within the network.

“Now that service has been restored, we have been in contact with this customer to ensure that everything has been fully resolved and all equipment is working once again.”