After almost two days of being unable to receive telephone calls, a council was back online yesterday.

Wear Valley District Council's telephone lines were disabled when a workman accidentally cut through a fibre optic cable at the weekend.

The problem was discovered on Monday morning as no incoming calls could be received, and, after working through the night, engineers were able to rectify the situation by 2pm yesterday.

E-mail communications were also delayed, although a council spokeswoman said that they had been able to respond to some queries electronically.

She said: "It would have caused some problems, but the lines have been restored now."