AN ANGRY resident claims she was trapped in her home after engineers closed the road on either side of her property.

Gill Reese, from Forston, near Dorchester, said she was dismayed to find BT had shut the A352 that goes past her house to the north and south of her property.

She claims she had no warning about the work taking place and feedback from neighbours suggested they were equally in the dark.

BT admits road closures were put in place, but claims Mrs Reese was able to access the property with ‘minimum difficulty’ throughout the time the barriers were in place.

Mrs Reese, who is retired, said: “The workmen assured me a lot of money had been spent on putting notes through all our doors along this road but no one has seen them.

“It’s the biggest road closure in the whole of Dorset, having an A road shut and motorists coming from the north are having to turn round and go all the way back to Cerne Abbas.

“On the first day it was all locals coming through as none of us have been told about it.”

The closures were in place from 9.30am to 3.30pm as work was carried out by BT.

Mrs Reese said: “It was a horrible situation, my husband wanted to go out on a long journey to Lowestoft and I wanted to go to Charminster to see my friend and we were being trapped in with no warning this was going to happen to us.”

She added that her husband went and moved the barrier and when they complained they were told that moving the barrier was illegal.

After being blocked in at the end of last week, Mrs Reese was relieved to find the barriers had at least been moved as work continued throughout the day.

She said she was still unable to leave her village to the south on Friday and had to go all the way north to Cerne Abbas and onto the Old Sherborne Road to get to Dorchester.

Mrs Reese said the work was being done to lay a fibre optic cable that had initially been requested by Dorset Wildlife Trust, which has offices in the village, but they no longer wanted the connection.

A spokesman for the wildlife trust confirmed they no longer required the cable. A BT spokesman said the work being carried out was the laying of fibre optic tubing to ‘increase the capacity of the local network’.

He also denied that Mrs Reese had ever been ‘trapped’ in her home.

The spokesman said: “It is not correct that anybody was trapped in their home.

“As I understand it, on returning to her home access was requested and our engineers allowed her to go ahead almost immediately.

“There are barriers and lights there because there has to be to do this work. But it has been possible to enter and leave that property with minimal difficulties throughout the road closure.”

Mrs Reese strongly denied the claims of BT.

She said: “It’s not true because my husband went out early in the morning and although we moved the barrier we were told we were breaking the law.”