THOUSANDS of homes across Bromsgrove have suffered from digital television disruption for more than four days due to problems with the town’s transmitter.

Residents have made a number of complaints to DigitalUK about the reception to their Freeview TV channels since work to the Bromsgrove transmitter on Thursday, November 4.

The problem has varied from people being without just a few programmes to homes losing all channels. The town’s transmitter covers 30,000 households.

Resident Darren Mansell said: “Since Thursday night last week large proportions of Bromsgrove residents have been without Freeview to varying degrees.

“Many people will be calling engineers in or buying new equipment which is going to cost money for something that is not their fault.

“DigitalUK which is performing this digital switch over work on the transmitter has not communicated any of this to residents and I assume they will try to sweep it under the carpet when they find out the scale of this problem.”

The problem was also highlighted by resident Andrew Bull. He said: “Apart from the general inconvenience it is particularly poor that this problem is hitting hardest those who have already made the effort in preparation for the switch over next year. This is not a great way of building confidence in the change which is being paid for by license payers.”

A DigitalUK spokesman said: “We are aware that some viewers in the Bromsgrove area are reporting issues with their TV reception. The transmission company is investigating.”

Bruce Randall from Arqiva, the firm carrying out the work to the transmitter on behalf of Digital UK, said: “We are in the process of upgrading the transmitters. The new antenna should be able to work just as well as the one it is replacing. We are now looking into the problem and will try and get it resolved as soon as possible.”