West Wellow village in Hampshire left without signal

Most of West Wellow residents are Vodafone users and have experienced little to no signal

Residents in a Hampshire village are having to drive outside the area to make calls after being left with no phone signal for more than a week.

West Wellow has been affected by work on a phone mast that is expected to continue until 15 September.

One village resident said local people were not contacted before the maintenance work started on 15 August.

Vodafone, the main provider in the area, and O2 have both apologised to affected customers.

Local resident Philippa Williams, who also organises the Romsey Food Fair, said for the past week she had been "driving out to another village to get signal".

"As I work from home, trying to organise the Romsey Food Fair in two weeks and its impossible to get hold of people," she said.

"[Vodafone] didn't contact us and its very frustrating."

Others have described the situation as "unacceptable", particularly for those without landlines.

A Vodafone spokesperson said the signal issues had been caused by National Grid carrying out maintenance work in the area.

"We're really sorry that work going on by the National Grid has meant our site has been turned off and this is affecting our customers," they said.

"We know it is inconvenient and frustrating.

"We only have permission to contact customers about outages if they register on the Network Status Checker with their location."

A spokesperson for the National Grid said it was "completing refurbishment work on the overhead electricity line in the West Wellow area".

They added: "This has been planned with the mobile phone service provider for months to ensure we can continue to deliver power reliably and safely to the local area and beyond.

"For safety reasons cellular equipment needs to be turned off by the provider while this work is carried out, and it is their responsibility to provide alternative coverage for their customers."

Some residents have also reported issues with accessing data.

An O2 spokesperson said: "We apologise to customers in the West Wellow area who may experience intermittent issues with their calls, texts and data while National Grid carry out works in the area.

"A nearby phone mast has been switched off whilst these works are completed for safety reasons.

"We aim to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for any inconvenience this causes."