A REWARD of £1,000 has been offered to find those responsible for damaging a telephone exchange network leaving homes and businesses disconnected.

Crimestoppers and partner Openreach (a BT Group Business) are appealing for information about the incident, which occurred 800 metres from Seal Sands telephone exchange, Billingham along Seaton Carew Road, at around 10pm last Friday (September 25).

The damage left locals without communications services for a number of hours while engineers worked round the clock to ensure disruption was kept to a minimum.

Dave Hunter, North East regional manager for Crimestoppers, said: “Communities are fed up of having these types of incidents occur because it is hugely disruptive, while it can also be costly to local businesses.

“Don’t let the people responsible for this crime get away with their actions."

BT uses many security measures in the fight against malicious damage to their network, which includes its alarm technology RABIT (Rapid Assessment BT Incident Tracker), which activates within seconds of an incident happening.

If anyone has information they can contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800-555111 or crimestoppers-uk.org