A FAULT with a phone mast has seen residents in St Helens hit with problems accessing a signal on their mobiles.  

O2 says it is aware of an issue "impacting a mast serving the St Helens area".

Residents in the town have expressed frustration on social media over being unable to get a signal on their phones.

It is understood the town centre is an area which has been experiencing problems.

The company says it is working to fix the issue.

However, although nearby masts are providing service to the area, O2 says users may lose signal when volumes of traffic are high.

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An O2 spokesperson said: "We're aware of an issue currently impacting a mast serving the St Helens area, and have been working hard to have it fixed as a priority.

"Nearby masts are providing service to the area during this time, however customers may experience intermittent issues when volumes of traffic over these nearby masts are high.

"Engineers are due on site to restore full service to the area, and we apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused whilst this work is ongoing."

The company said the issue is not a full service outage in the area as nearby masts to St Helens town centre have been optimised to cover, or already overlap, and provide signal to the area but that "during peak mobile traffic times, customers may experience some intermittent issues".