Official PIN rates
How much do prison calls cost at Forest Bank?
They pay from PIN credit, not you. Official weekday rates: 2.48p a minute to a landline, 5.50p to a mobile. 10p minimum. See what a week costs them.
- Landline2.48p a minute
- Mobile5.5p a minute
- Minimum10p a connected call
Weekday rates — the dearer days. Weekend is cheaper. A typical 15-minute call, five times a week, is £4.13 to a mobile and £1.86 to a landline. Until 31 May 2027.
Same week, both numbers
Your mobile
£4.13
5.5p a minute. They pay this from PIN credit.
A landline
£1.86
£2.27 less from the same week. The rate is official, not a product.
What is local at Forest Bank
- Families at Forest Bank report a PIN wait of 2 days.
- Families at Forest Bank report a first-call wait of 2 days.
Which landline number should you give them?
A landline costs them less than half as much on weekdays. Since 11 August, numbers that forward calls can be refused.
Update
Since 11 August 2026, 0800 numbers as social contacts — and numbers used for call diversion / re-routing — must be restricted.
GOV.UK · Interception policy framework · §7.9Any UK landline gets the landline rate. If you have one at home, give them that. It costs nothing extra.
Questions families ask
- Official weekday rates at HMP Forest Bank: 2.48p a minute to a UK landline, 5.5p to a UK mobile. 10p minimum per connected call. A typical 15-minute call, five times a week, is £4.13 to a mobile and £1.86 to a landline. Weekend is cheaper. Until 31 May 2027.
- They pay from PIN credit, not you. There is no incoming call. Credit is bought from spends. Private-cash is one part of that.
- A landline is 2.48p a minute on a weekday. A mobile is 5.5p. Same week, same minutes: about £2.27 less from their PIN on a landline.
- A UK landline is the cheap rate: 2.48p a minute on a weekday, against 5.5p for a mobile. Cheap prison-call apps usually forward the call, and prisons can refuse those numbers since 11 August 2026. The call-services guide lists which ones still connect.
- No. The call rate is the same. Weekly private-cash is not. That is the Incentives Policy Framework, not the phone tariff.
- The pence-per-minute here is the public-estate tariff. HMP Forest Bank is run by Sodexo, outside that contract; the Ministry of Justice says many private prisons have cut their rates to match, but HMP Forest Bank does not publish its own. Ask the prison to be sure. What is local is the PIN wait, the first call, and any call-length cap families report.
How we price a week
- The tariff is national for the public estate. A prison page does not invent a local rate.
- The calculator and worked examples use weekday rates — the dearer days. Weekend is cheaper.
- Each connected call is at least 10p, even if the minute-rate would be less.
- They buy PIN credit from spends. Private-cash is one part of that. The call rate does not change on Basic, Standard or Enhanced.
- Local pages add what families report at that prison: PIN wait, first call, and any call-length cap. Those are community reports, not an HMPPS service level.
- Rates last checked September 2026. The published tariff runs until 31 May 2027.
Sources: GOV.UK · Staying in touch with someone in prison · Ministry of Justice · letter to the Justice Committee, 1 July 2025 · GOV.UK · Incentives Policy Framework · GOV.UK · Interception policy framework · §7.9. Last checked September 2026. IEP updated 31 March 2025.