If a prison has blocked your number or refused to add it, that decision sits under published rules. In England and Wales a restriction has to be necessary on specific grounds and proportionate, the person in prison — and usually the contact — should be told in broad terms why, and it expires after three months unless it is renewed.
Two very different things get called "blocked", and what you can do depends on which one has happened.
How a number gets on the list in the first place
Someone in prison cannot ring whoever they like. They can only call numbers on their own approved contact list, and the prison's phone system will not connect anything else. Under PSI 49/2011, a prisoner on a call-enabling regime can hold up to 20 social numbers, alongside separate legal and confidential-access numbers. New numbers are submitted by the person in prison, not by you: GOV.UK puts the timing plainly, saying the list "is checked by security when they first arrive so it may take a few days before they're able to call". Two things follow from that, and they shape everything below. You cannot add yourself to the list, however urgent it feels. And the phone system takes no incoming calls at all — PSI 49/2011 is explicit on that point — so there is no number you can ring to sort it out from the outside.
Why would a prison refuse or block a number?
There is no single answer, but the published policy narrows it to a handful of situations.
The number did not pass a check. For certain groups of prisoners, staff must verify that the person behind a submitted number really is who the prisoner says they are. The Authorised Communications Controls and Interception Policy Framework lists those groups: category A prisoners, people remanded or convicted of terrorism offences, anyone identified as posing a risk to children, harassment and stalking cases or those under a court-imposed order, domestic abuse cases, Schedule 3 sexual offences, witness-intimidation risks, and prisoners on the escape list. The check is a phone call: staff confirm who they are speaking to, how that person knows the prisoner, and whether they are happy to be contacted on that number.
For everyone else, that checking is not mandatory. The framework says it "can therefore be considered and managed locally in consideration of risk and resource" — which is why practice varies so much between prisons, and why two people in different establishments get completely different answers.
The number is linked to someone the prisoner must not contact. Restrictions on public-protection grounds — victims, non-contact requests, court orders and injunctions, cases involving risk to children — run through a separate route in PSI 18/2016, the Public Protection Manual.
Intelligence suggests a problem. A number is not added where intelligence suggests it is an attempt to get around restrictions already imposed, or where there is reasonable suspicion that the number belongs to another prisoner.
A formal restriction has been imposed on the person in prison. This is the one people mean when they say "blocked". It runs under Prison Rule 34 (Rule 9 in a young offender institution), and it is not open-ended: the framework requires it to be necessary on one of eight listed grounds, compatible with human rights, and proportionate to what it is trying to achieve. Those grounds are national security; preventing, detecting, investigating or prosecuting crime; public safety; prison security, good order and discipline; protecting health or morals; protecting the reputation of others; maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary; and protecting the rights and freedoms of any person.
It is worth knowing that a full restriction on communication between a prisoner and a named contact also covers visits. If contact has been restricted, a visiting order is unlikely to be the way round it.
Has it been blocked — or is it just not on the list yet?
This is the most common confusion, and the two feel identical from the outside: the call does not come.
A number that is simply working its way through checks is not blocked. The framework tells staff to keep those delays down: where a prisoner has submitted a list of numbers, each one "should be added to the account once checked, rather than waiting for every number on the list to be checked", and prisoners should be told about each addition as soon as is practical.
So if a number went in a week ago and nothing has happened, the useful question is not "why am I blocked" but "has my number been checked yet, and has it been added". Those get different answers from different staff.
A restriction, by contrast, is a decision someone has taken, recorded on a form, and authorised. It comes with paperwork — and with the obligations in the next section.
If you are about to submit a number, it is worth knowing what it costs before it goes on the list.
Are you entitled to know why?
Largely, yes, and this surprises most people.
Where a restriction is imposed, the framework requires that the prisoner and the contact are informed of it, using a standard notification letter, including broad reasons why. It goes further for the prisoner: sufficient reasons must be disclosed to explain why restricting contact is necessary and proportionate.
Information can be withheld, but only for listed reasons — national security; preventing, detecting, investigating or prosecuting crime or disorder; maintaining prison security, good order and discipline; protecting a third party who could be put at risk by disclosure; medical or psychiatric grounds where someone's health could be harmed; where the source is a victim and disclosure would breach confidence; or where disclosure is prohibited by law.
"We can't discuss it" is therefore not automatically the end of it: the policy treats reasons as the default and withholding them as the exception.
How long does a block last?
Not forever, which is the single most useful fact here.
A restriction imposed through this process expires three months from the date it was approved. It can be renewed, but only if extending it is still considered necessary and proportionate, and the renewal has to be authorised by the last day of the existing period. It can also be cancelled earlier — the framework gives a change in the assessed risk as the example — and the reasons for cancelling have to be recorded.
One more distinction worth having. A restriction is normally applied by the prison the person is currently in; applying it across the whole prison estate is a separate step, requested from a central unit called the Central Authorities Bureau. Most restrictions are local, which is why a transfer sometimes changes the picture.
A landline number is charged at a lower rate than a mobile, whatever happens with approval.
What if the number is shared with the rest of the family?
Households share landlines and, sometimes, mobiles. The framework anticipates this directly, and the wording is unusually helpful.
Where a restriction applies to a particular number but a close relative who shares that number still needs to be able to communicate with the prisoner, staff "must therefore identify a workable solution to ensure proportionate application of the restriction" — the examples given are finding another contact number for the relative to use, or putting additional controls in place to manage the risk.
In plain terms: a restriction aimed at one person is not supposed to silence everyone else in the house by accident. If that is what has happened, it is a reasonable thing to raise.
What you can do next
Nothing here is legal advice, and none of it guarantees an outcome. But there is a sensible order.
Start by having the person in prison ask which of the two situations applies — not yet checked, or restricted. If it is a restriction, they can ask for the reasons the policy says they should be given, and use the prison's complaints process if they get nowhere. If the reasons point to something factual that is simply wrong — a digit transposed on a form, a number misheard over a bad line — that is worth correcting quickly rather than resubmitting blind.
If you are getting nowhere, the Prisoners' Families Helpline is free, independent and run by the charity Pact, and handles this sort of thing every day. The Prison Reform Trust advice guide is the clearest plain-English summary of prisoners' rights on contact, written for people in your position rather than for staff.
Does a call-forwarding number change any of this?
We sell a landline number that forwards to a mobile, so we will be straight rather than let you find out later.
HMPPS policy tells prisons to restrict some categories of number outright. The framework's wording is that requests to add 0800 numbers as social contacts, "and numbers linked to call diversion and re-routing services, must be restricted", on the basis that such numbers can be used to divert calls to contacts the prisoner is not supposed to reach. Services like ours fall inside that description.
In practice many of these numbers are added without difficulty, because checking social contacts is only mandatory for particular groups of prisoners and is otherwise handled locally. But "often accepted in practice" is not the same as "permitted by policy", and this industry blurs the two constantly. Any service telling you a prison cannot tell the difference, or that approval is certain, is not being straight with you.
What is true is narrower. The number has to be added to the approved contact list through the prison's normal process. The prison decides, and it can refuse. Calls are still recorded and monitored in the usual way. What changes is the rate the call is charged at — nothing else.
What people most often get wrong
Assuming silence means a block. Far more often it is a number still in the queue, or someone who has run out of phone credit.
Waiting instead of asking. Only the person in prison can chase their own list; from the outside there is no line to ring.
Resubmitting the same number. If it was refused for a reason, sending it again unchanged tends to produce the same result. Finding out the reason first is faster.
Treating a restriction as permanent. It expires after three months unless it is actively renewed.
Believing a service that promises approval. Nobody outside the prison can approve a number. Anyone selling certainty is selling something they do not have.
Frequently asked questions
The four that come up most often, answered from the same published policy.
Can I add my own number to a prisoner's list?
No. Numbers are submitted by the person in prison, through the establishment's own process. There is no route for a family member to add themselves, and the phone system does not accept incoming calls.
How long do the checks take?
GOV.UK says a new prisoner's list is checked by security on arrival and it may take a few days. Where checks are required, staff are told to add each number as it clears rather than holding the whole list back. Beyond that it varies by prison.
Will I be told if my number has been blocked?
Where a formal restriction is imposed, policy requires the prisoner and the contact to be told, with broad reasons — unless one of a short list of exceptions applies, such as an ongoing investigation or a risk to a third party.
Does a restriction stop visits too?
It can. A restriction on all communication between a prisoner and a named contact extends to communication during visits.
Rules on contact are not a black box, even when they feel like one from a kitchen table at nine at night. They are written down, they have time limits, and they come with a duty to explain. Knowing which of those levers exists is usually the difference between waiting and getting an answer.
If you have got a number cleared and want to bring the cost of those calls down, the monthly plans and what each one includes are set out on our pricing page — and how the landline number itself works is explained in how it works, alongside the questions families ask most.
If you decide a landline number is still worth trying, the plans are here.