Community shop losing trade after phone cut off

Thorncombe Village Shop manager Marie Humphries said the phone line issue had impacted trade

A community-run village shop said it was left in a "desperate" situation after its phone line went dead.

The team at Thorncombe Village Shop on the border of Dorset, Devon and Somerset said it lost connection at the start of July after a digital phone switchover with BT to change from an analogue line to a digital system.

Volunteers who help run the shop said they had spent hours on the phone with the phone company to resolve the issue but had been unsuccessful and the situation was impacting trade.

BT apologised for the disruption caused to the shop and said it had ordered the relevant equipment to repair the problem.

Landline operators such as BT are in the process of switching phone lines from traditional copper wire cables to an internet-based system by January 2027.

The team who run the shop said it had been effectively cut off following the issue around the phone switchover

The shop has been running for 15 years in Thorncombe -a village near Axminster and Chard.

Phil Gordon, a volunteer, said the situation had caused a "major problem".

"We're not able to support our aging local population in the village when they've been used to calling us up to place orders and occasionally get volunteers to drop things round to them," Mr Gordon said.

"We are rather desperate having spent hours on the phone talking to tech support people at BT and getting nowhere."

Shop manager Marie Humphries added: "We have lots of suppliers who can't phone us and we can't phone them.

"I'm trying to do it by mobile, but we don't always have a great signal in the village."

A BT spokesperson said the company was sincerely sorry for the disruption.

They added: "We have ordered the necessary new equipment to resolve the issue, and our team is in direct contact with the business to ensure service is restored as quickly as possible."