A third of UK workers have had their company telephone connection cut off during the past year owing to factors such as flooding, power cuts, road works and equipment faults, according to research released this week.

Of the one third of businesses affected, 60 per cent said that they had experienced up to a full day's phone disruption, costing an average of £14,431 per day.

The same number of respondents claimed that they were not aware of any disaster recovery plan to address the issue.

The poll, commissioned by VoIP provider Inclarity, found that businesses in London, East Midlands and the North East were most affected by unforeseen disruption to office telephone services.

The findings show that companies have failed to invest in sufficient back-up plans should the network that provides their telephone services be cut.

Inclarity reckons that by replacing a traditional telephone system with a modern VoIP platform businesses can divert all calls off-site should unforeseen disaster strike.

However, nearly two thirds of those questioned were not aware of a plan to deal with disruption to incoming calls caused by events beyond their control.

More than a quarter said that they could not be contacted or did not know how customers or suppliers would contact them during times of phone outage.

"Too many UK firms leave their phone systems in jeopardy," said Dave Millett, chief operating officer at Inclarity.

"Communication is the foundation stone of any successful business. Companies need to put more emphasis on ensuring that their phone system is as protected from downtime as they do with other areas such as network and data access."

According to Millet the £14,000 figure is "actually an underestimation" of the potential daily financial damage to companies.

"In today's competitive market company executives should make it their business to ensure that all their key people are available to their customers at all times," he said.