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HMP Preston is in Preston, Lancashire. HMPPS holds it at category B. What a call from Preston costs the person making it is set nationally rather than by the prison, and it turns entirely on the kind of number they dial.
Category B
Category B covers two very different jobs, and Preston does at least one of them: taking people straight from court, and holding them while a sentence gets under way. The first weeks are when contact is worst — a phone list has not been approved yet, nobody has any credit, and the household outside is still working out what has happened.
That matters for the number you give them. Getting a landline onto the list early, while everything else is still being sorted out, is the cheapest single thing a family can do — and it is a great deal easier to do once than to change later, because every change goes back through the same approval at Preston.
The same call, both ways
Nothing about Preston changes the price. Somebody there pays for their own calls out of private cash, at the national tariff, charged on whichever number they dial. The tariff, in full.
| A call of | To a mobile | To a landline |
|---|---|---|
| 10 minutes | £0.55 | £0.25 |
| 30 minutes | £1.65 | £0.74 |
| 60 minutes | £3.30 | £1.49 |
Weekday rates, which is roughly seven minutes in every ten. An hour a day for a month is £3.30 a day to a mobile — past what the standard spending cap allows.
Who runs it
So the published tariff is the tariff here — the figures above are the HMPPS rates, not an estimate. Fifteen establishments are contracted out and do not publish; Preston is not one of them.
Getting on the list
Every number has to be on their PIN account before it can be dialled, and only the person inside can put it there. Security check it first.
No published policy sets a deadline for that check, and it is no faster for being local to Lancashire. Nobody outside can add a number for them, and ringing the switchboard does not speed it up.
Why sending more won’t fix it
Preston caps what a person may spend from their own account each week, as every prison does — £21.75 on the standard regime. You can send in what you like; the cap is what they are allowed to use. At the mobile rate that buys about 1,911 minutes a month. At the landline rate, about 3,933.
So the only thing left to change is the rate. Work out your own figure.
It goes on the list at Preston like any other number, and rings the phone you already carry — so roughly 2× the talk comes out of the same capped account, and the difference stays with them. £19.99 a month, unlimited. It is for households where somebody is ringing most days — around 26 minutes of it; below that the difference is too small to charge you for.
The rate is set nationally by HMPPS, not by the prison, and it depends on the number dialled. Ringing a mobile costs 5.50p a minute on weekdays and 3.60p at weekends. Ringing a landline costs 2.48p and 2.20p. A half-hour call to a mobile is £1.65; the same call to a landline is £0.74. The person inside pays, out of their own account.
They add it, not you. The person inside puts the number forward, prison security check it, and it appears on their PIN account. No published HMPPS policy sets a deadline for that check, so we will not quote you one — GOV.UK says only that the list is checked when someone first arrives and it may take a few days before they can call. You cannot ring in to add a number, and nobody outside can add one for them.
Not to speak to someone inside. Calls only go one way: they ring out from the wing or from an in-cell handset, to numbers already cleared on their list. The prison's switchboard is for official business. If something is urgent, ask for the establishment's safer custody line.
If they are moved, it is often not far. Your number goes with them either way — it is yours, not the establishment’s.
Six of the 15 establishments in the region. The full list has the rest.
Rates are the published HMPPS tariff for England and Wales, effective 1 April 2025. Who operates each establishment was checked on 20 August 2026. The estate changes — prisons close, rename and change hands — so tell us if this page is out of date, and check the full directory for the current list.