Keeping one phone number for a club or village hall cheaply

The good news: this got cheaper, not harder

If you look after the phone number for a club, charity or village hall, the switch-off can feel like a threat to something that's worked for decades. It isn't. Moving to digital actually makes a single shared number cheaper and simpler to keep — you shed the old line rental and replace it with a small digital line.

The old analogue network switches off on 31 January 2027, and analogue lines already stopped being sold to new customers back in September 2023. So the move is happening regardless — the trick is doing it on the cheap.

The cheapest setup, in plain terms

For a hall or club, you almost never need handsets all over the building. You need one number that reaches a person. Two low-cost ways to do that:

1. Port the number to a single hosted VoIP line. Entry hosted VoIP starts from around £7 a user a month plus VAT, and you only have one "user" — the shared number. It rings a volunteer's mobile through a free app, or a handset if you want one.
2. Use call divert. Openreach lists call divert as one of the standard features on a digital line — forward the number to any phone you like, so calls land on whoever's on duty.

Either way you keep the number everyone knows, and you pay a few pounds a month instead of full business line rental.

What it costs, roughly

Setup	Rough cost	Good for
Single hosted VoIP line, rings a mobile/app	From ~£7/month +VAT	Most clubs and halls
Call divert to a volunteer's mobile	Small monthly add-on	Simplest possible setup
Full multi-line business plan	More, per user	Not needed for one number

The thing to avoid is being sold a multi-user business package you don't need. One number pointing at one phone is all most committees want — the smallest single-line option covers it.

The one rule that matters: order, then cancel

The number is only at risk if you let the old line lapse before moving it. So:

1. Set up the new digital line first.
2. Confirm the number has ported across.
3. Only then cancel the old line.

Do it in that order and there's no gap and no lost number. Do it the other way round and you risk losing a number the community has used for years.

Do you even need broadband in the hall?

Often, no. If the number simply rings through to a volunteer's mobile or app, the calls travel over that phone's connection — so you don't need broadband in the building at all. You'd only need a line in the hall if you want a physical handset sitting there. For most clubs, pointing the number at a mobile is the cheapest, simplest answer.

In short

Keeping a club or village hall number through the switch-off is a small, cheap job: port it to a single digital line from about £7 a month plus VAT, point it at a volunteer's phone, and remember to set the new line up before cancelling the old. No big plan, no building full of handsets — just the one number, kept.