• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• UK: Telephones cut off in emergencies

UK: Telephones cut off in emergencies

01 July 1997

The police are secretly disconnecting thousands of telephones during public emergencies. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph this happened during the Brixton uprisings, the disasters at Lockerbie and Hillsborough, the Hungerford massacre and during an IRA hoax bombing of the Grand National at Aintree in the spring. Minutes from British Telecom (BT) says that this is done to protect the telephone network from being swamped by panic calls preventing calls to the emergency services.

Ninety per cent of phones were cut off at the exchanges blacking any outgoing calls but leaving the emergency services, local authorities and senior politicians with a full service.

Non-mobile phones are cut off under the Telephone Preference Scheme developed for the "Cold War" and national emergencies like strikes and public order in the 1950s and 1960s. It is run by BT on behalf of the Home Office. Under the Scheme every phone in the country is secretly classified into one of three preference levels: Category 1, for senior police, military bases and government departments; Category 2 for local government officials, MPs and judges; and Category 3, for everyone else - 90% of the network. In a "war emergency" Categories 2 and 3 are disconnected, in a civil emergency only Category 3 is cut off. The official purpose is to "safeguard essential users" from "unessential" ones.

Mobile phones are cut off by ACCOLC or Access Overload Control - a 1991 memorandum from the Cabinet Office said: "knowledge of ACCOLC must be protected." Each mobile phone is placed in one of 15 categories - Levels 0-9 cover the public, Level 12, the emergency services, Level 13, higher government officials and Levels 14 and 15 are "reserved". An order to cut off Levels 0-9 can be made by the police or the Cabinet Office. Level 12 was invoked during the Aintree bomb hoax cutting off users in north Liverpool below that Level.

Sunday Telegraph, 24.8.97.