Frustrated villagers have hit out after being left without broadband for more than three weeks after a telegraph pole was felled in a crash.

Almost 20 households in Ivychurch on Romney Marsh have been left without internet since a motorist ploughed into a pole in the middle of May.

Residents say that they are unable to run businesses or work from home until it is replaced by network provider Openreach – but works to do so have been pushed back at least twice.

Alan Martin said that the experience has been "infuriating".

"Firstly, it was a nightmare trying to nail down who was actually responsible for the replacement work," he explained.

"We are all on different services like Sky or BT, but it is actually Openreach who handle jobs like this.

"After we got in contact with them they gave us a date of the end of that week for it to be fixed, but then it was pushed back, then once more the following week."

Among several reasons given by Openreach engineers, the most common was the need to order a pole and to get permission to put traffic lights in to protect the works, Mr Martin said.

"I absolutely understand the need for lights, but we have spoken to the council and they say there is no hold-up their end if that were needed, it could happen the same day.

"I don't see why they would need to 'order' a post either, it seems a bizarre excuse. You just get the impression that they are fobbing you off."

The telegraph pole can still be seen lying at the side of Ashford Road three weeks after it was snapped into pieces by a speeding motorist.

Two pieces have separated from the base, surrounded by shrapnel from the red car that left the road at around 9.50pm on Saturday 21 May.

Martin Killick, who lives opposite where the crash site was, called the police after spotting the driver running away from the scene.

"You can see just how hard he hit it, the fact that it has completely snapped in two different places means he must have been going at a serious pace," he said.

"The car was completely unrecognisable – I wouldn't even be able to guess at what model it used to be. Frankly, he was very lucky to be alive."

Despite an extensive search of the area, including police dogs and a drone, the driver was not located, although attempts to identify him are ongoing.

In the meantime, however, Mr Killick says that he has been unable to run his business or access cameras around his property.

"Somebody else hit the fence at the front of my house and I can't access the cameras to see who it is because they need the broadband to work," he explained.

"It's also so much harder to work from here – we have installed a dongle that just about does some semblance of a job, but you need to be literally right next to it to get any connection at all.

"They told us at the last point of asking that it would be this Friday, so June 17. By that point it will almost be a full month without proper connection."

When contacted by KentOnline, an Openreach spokesman said that the works had been brought forward to Wednesday.

They said: "We’re really sorry for the disruption here. One of our poles was badly damaged and has left 17 properties without broadband," they added.

"Due to the location of the work, we’ve had no option but to apply for temporary traffic lights to enable our engineers to work safely. We now have permission to start work, and on Wednesday we’ll bring in a specialist team to replace the pole, install new cables and connect everyone back to the network.

"It’s a fairly complex job and will take most of the day, but we’re confident there will be no further issues after that.”