Some residents in Yalding are still waiting to have their phones reconnected a week after thieves plunged the village into communication darkness by stealing phone cables.

A neighbour called police at 2am last Friday after hearing noises as thieves stripped copper cables from a junction box in Bow Street, Wateringbury.

Police attended too late to catch them, but nevertheless it is thought that the villains escaped virtually empty-handed - as they made off down Hunt Street a cable trailing from their vehicle became wrapped around a boulder and yanked most of the haul off their truck.

Repairs by Openreach have taken longer than normal.

When the the thieves yanked out the cables, they also pulled out the individual phone port connectors, and then casually threw them into a pool of water, which destroyed them.

So as well as replacing the cable, Openreach has had to individually re-connect each of the estimated 400 households affected.

The first lucky ones were reconnected on Tuesday, and others have been coming online throughout the week with the firm hopeful of connecting the last ones today.

Nicola Randall said: "My nan lives in Lyngs Close. She is 95 and relies on her landline and her lifeline.

"She's been without a line for a week. Its disgraceful. Thank goodness she has brilliant neighbours!"

Parish council chairman Geraldine Brown, who herself lost her phone initially, said: "The men carrying out the repairs have been brilliant.

"It's been a difficult task, though it did seem to take Openreach several days to get a digger to the site initially."

Yalding is not the first village to be hit by cable thefts. Horsmonden villagers there lost their phones fives times in four weeks in a series of cable thefts, though fortunately on the last occasion in June, police arrested a suspect - a 25-year-old man from Margate.

In July, the biggest theft to date left 8,000 homes and businesses across Maidstone, Sutton Valence and Staplehurst without phones.

The rising price of copper, which recently reached £8,000 a tonne, is making cable thefts more attractive to criminals.

An Openreach spokesman said: "We are really disappointed that people in and around Yalding and other parts of the Kent are regularly bearing the brunt of criminal behaviour.

"These attacks on our network have caused significant damage and unacceptable disruption to the lives of local people through the loss of phone and broadband services. This particular cable theft has impacted around 400 homes and businesses in the local area.

“Our security team is working closely with Kent Police and we’ve deployed additional security measures to protect our network from future attacks.

'We'll do out best'

"Engineers are on site today, and we’ll do our best to replace the cable, repair the damaged infrastructure and connect everyone back up again as quickly as possible."

Police are still appealing for information about the Yalding theft. Call 01622 604100, quoting reference 46/150890/22.

You can also contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.