10 October 2026
Moving premises without losing your phone number
Your number is tied to an area code, not to a building — but move far enough and the rules change. What survives a move, what doesn't, and the sequence that keeps it yours.
£9.99 a monthUp to 300 minutes a month to a UK mobile included, then 5p a minute.
A phone number printed on a van, a shopfront, a thousand business cards and the first page of Google results is worth more than most of the equipment in the building. It is also the thing most likely to be thrown away by accident during a move, usually by someone doing the sensible-looking thing and cancelling the old line before the new one is ready.
The good news first. A landline number belongs to you, not to the building and not to the provider. If you are moving within the same area — the same town, the same dialling code — you can almost always take the number with you, and the process is the ordinary one: you ask the new provider to transfer it, they ask the old one, and a few weeks later it moves. You do not need the old premises, and you do not need to keep paying for the old line while you wait.
The awkward case is moving out of area. Geographic numbers are tied to their dialling code, and a traditional provider generally will not move a Manchester 0161 number to an address in Bristol, because the number belongs to the Manchester exchange. That is the rule that catches people out, and it is why businesses that move counties often end up starting again with a new number and a year of redirects.
A number that is not attached to a line is not caught by that rule in the same way. If the number lives on a carrier's network and the call is forwarded to whatever mobile you tell it to, your address is not part of the arrangement. You can move the business from Manchester to Bristol, keep the 0161 number because your customers know it, and have it ring the same phone it rang before. Nothing about the move touches the number — there is no engineer, no installation date, and no window where calls go nowhere.
That cuts the other way too, and it is worth saying plainly: if you are moving and you actively want to look local to the new place, you can simply have a number in the new area code instead, and point both at the same mobile for as long as the old customers keep ringing. Two numbers, one phone, and you choose when to let the old one go rather than having the move choose for you.
What it costs is the same either way: £9.99 a month per number, with no connection fee and no contract, so running two for a few months while the old one winds down is a decision about money rather than a commitment. Up to 300 minutes a month to a UK mobile included, then 5p a minute. Transferring a number in is free.
Whatever you do, get the sequence right, because this is the one that actually loses numbers. Arrange the transfer first. Let it complete. Cancel the old service last. If you cancel first, the number goes back to your old provider's pool and your right to it goes with it — and once it is in the pool, no amount of asking brings it back. Allow a few weeks, start before the removal van is booked, and the number is the one thing about the move you will not have to think about.