TAXI firms are counting the cost after phone lines crashed in the early hours of New Year's Day.

Emergency services patrolled the streets as 29,000 phones lines in Northwich, Weaverham, Hartford and Sandiway suffered a major fault.

Engineers worked through the night to repair the problem caused when water poured into the Northwich telephone exchange during bad weather.

The drama began at around 1am when water started leaking through the roof of the telephone exchange in Middlewich Road, Rudheath.

A spokesman from Cheshire Police said they were informed shortly after 2am that there was a fault on the 999 line.

"We liaised with all the emergency services and sent patrols to act as a contact point for any members of the public," she said.

Meanwhile taxi firms lost business on what is their busiest night of the year.

Kathleen Phillips, of Jack Jones Private Hire Cars, said: "All customers got was an engaged tone and they must have thought we had left the phone off the hook.

"We weren't even able to divert phones," she added.

Graham Webb, of Castle Cars, said he intended to seek compensation.

"It's our busiest night of the year. You cannot quantify how much revenue we have lost.

"It was ridiculous you couldn't even phone 999."

Carl Butcher, of Station Cars, said: "We always want to run a business on time but if we were running late we like to keep customers informed and unfortunately this was not possible."

A spokesman from BT said: "We sent out engineers straight away, we had to protect the equipment from the water."

The fault was repaired by 5.30am.