Hi Kane2023uk ๐ Welcome to the community forum! Thank you for posting.
The community have already correctly advised that any email address needs to be linked to an active broadband services account to stay active. You can find more information about managing email accounts, and that they are deleted within 90 days of the termination of broadband services here ๐ How to manage my email account | Virgin Media Help (head to the section titled 'how to close or delete an account')
If the email is not linked to an active services account it becomes 'orphaned' - no longer linked with an active parent account, and can be deleted at any time.
All of our mobile services are now in conjunction with O2. You can read more about this here ๐ Virgin Mobile | Phone & SIM Deals - See What You Can Do (virginmedia.com) - head to the section titled 'What happened to Virgin Mobile.'
When did you leave our broadband services? And when did you loose access to the email account?
Wishing you all the best. ๐