A mobile phone service outage has left some people in Stockport struggling to call family or make urgent calls, a councillor has claimed.

David Meller said the issues are affecting O2 customers based around Cheadle, Cheadle Heath, and nearby areas.

The Labour councillor said the issues have been going on for weeks.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "I've received many, many messages from people and examples include being unable to pay for shopping, make urgent calls to doctors or family members, and small businesses being left unable to contact their customers.

"This is vital infrastructure that my residents are being left without.

"Any 999 calls would, thankfully, be carried by another network, so I expect emergency calls wouldn't be affected."

The councillor urged O2 to give an update to customers and 'get this sorted urgently'.

Councillor Meller added: "They should also credit accounts or allow those affected to leave and find another network provider.

"Residents shouldn't have to pay for a service that isn't available."

The issue was caused by vandalism to a generator in the area, according to O2.

The company confirmed there was a mobile service outage caused by the incident, and that specialist repairs were needed before the service could be brought back online.

Full service in the area has now been fully restored, the firm said.

An O2 spokesperson added: "Mobile service has now been restored in Cheadle following a temporary outage, and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

"The issue was caused by vandalism to our network infrastructure which required specialist repairs to bring the site back online.

"Our engineers worked as quickly as possible to complete repairs and have now restored service to normal levels."

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