BAD weather has been blamed for a series of phone line faults in the Dorchester area.

Dozens of phones have gone down over the last few days because of the weather, a BT spokesman said today.

But one man who has been without a phone for more than 10 days said BT had told him 600 homes were without phones.

Allan Reese, of Forston near Dorchester, discovered his phone was out of order on October 28.

He reported the fault to BT a day later and although he was told an engineer would be coming to sort it out nothing has happened.

Now he has been told an engineer will visit on Thursday - almost two weeks after the fault was discovered.

He said: "I got back home from a few days away on October 28 to find my telephone was off.

"It was still off the next day so I reported it to BT.

"After checking the line BT said there was a fault on the line and an engineer would be scheduled to call.

"The phone was up and down during the week and I had no idea whether or not an engineer had been, but it still wasn't working properly."

Mr Reese said that he reported the fault again and a BT operator said an engineer would now be out on November 10 - nearly two weeks after the fault was first reported.

Mr Reese said: "The operator said I wasn't the only person having problems with my phone - 600 lines were affected.

"I am not happy with the response.

"We can't get a mobile phone signal where I am and I depend on the phone line."

But a spokesman for BT said that although quite a few homes in the Dorchester area were without phones at the moment it was not as many as Mr Reese was told.

"We do have a high level of faults across the region caused by the recent bad weather, but we certainly do not have 600 - there's nothing like that figure.

"It's more like two to three dozen homes."

He said engineers were working around the clock to fix the faults and non-urgent work was being postponed to ensure that phones were up and running quickly.

"We are doing all we can to put these faults right," he said.