VILLAGERS in East Prawle have agreed to paint their own phone box after they were told it would not otherwise be done 'before the summer'.

With no mobile phone signal in the village, the telephone box is still an essential amenity. Local residents were concerned that the box hadn’t been painted for about ten years and hoped to get it spruced up in time for the summer visitors.

David Hampden-Smith, who lives in the village, contacted BT to report the sorry state of the box, and to ask when it would be given a fresh lick of paint.

He was told by BT that ‘they are only painted when requested’ and that ‘there wouldn’t be time to paint it before the summer’.

At which point, David asked whether local residents would be able to repaint the box themselves.

BT, whose profits were reported to be more than £3 billion at the end of March, were more than happy to accept the offer of voluntary work, and duly posted out a complete ‘telephone box paint kit’, including two and half litres of pink undercoat, two and a half litres of ‘currant red’ top coat, half a litre of black gloss, half a litre of white gloss, three paintbrushes, a dust sheet and some white spirit.

In recent years, local communities have been ‘adopting’ their phoneboxes for other uses, such as to store a defibrillator or use as a small library. In certain instances, similar paint kits have been made available to local communities free of charge.

Jason Mann, a spokesman for BT said: ‘We were approached by a member of the public who offered to paint the kiosk, and we provided the paint free of charge.

‘The telephone box in East Prawle wasn’t due to be immediately repainted, as part of our current programme of works.’

When asked for details of the BT schedule for maintaining and repainting rural phone boxes, Mr Mann said: ‘My understanding is there is a schedule for maintaining these kiosks. But we were contacted about the repainting ahead of schedule.

‘We would of course expect the kiosk to be working and in an acceptable condition.

‘The work could be done by a contractor on our behalf, but in this instance, we were approached by a member of the public, and as it wasn’t in our programme of works, we provided the paint.’

Mr Hampden-Smith went on to explain that this wasn’t the first time that he’d contacted BT about the state of the village’s phone box, having previously drawn attention to an ‘exposed cable’ at the back of the box.

That time, he was told that it was the responsibility of Open Reach, who when contacted, came and fixed the problem by covering the cable with some stones.

As reported in this week’s Village Voice, East Prawle correspondent Anne Blyth said: ‘What a wonderful job some members of the community have done on the telephone box on the Green, which is in constant use as mobile phones do not work in East Prawle.

‘It was looking very shabby so it was mentioned to BT that maybe it could do with a coat of paint.

‘They said they would supply the paint but could not do the painting.

‘Step forward Rob Bunn and Kim Tucker, who have done a wonderful job of making it look almost new. Thank you very much for all your hard work.’