23 April 2026 · CareTime
On 22 April 2026, Ofcom's ban on leasing Global Titles came into force for existing leases. Global Titles are identifiers used in the global phone signalling network, and leased access to them had become a common route for overseas scammers to make calls that appeared to come from UK mobile numbers. Closing this route is a meaningful step in the effort to reduce spoofed calls reaching UK consumers and businesses — including care homes. The ban does not eliminate nuisance calls, but it removes one of the main technical routes that made UK-number spoofing cheap and scalable.
A Global Title is a code that identifies a telecoms operator inside the SS7 signalling system. Legitimate operators use them to route calls and messages across networks. Over recent years, however, operators had been leasing Global Titles to third parties — including entities overseas — who then used that access to send calls and messages that appeared to originate from UK numbers. This is the technique behind a large volume of UK-number-spoofed scam calls.
Ofcom's ban on leasing Global Titles was announced in 2024, came into force for new leases in 2025, and applied to existing leases from 22 April 2026. From that date, UK telecoms operators can no longer lease Global Titles to third parties for the purpose of routing traffic as if it were UK-originated.
In practice, this should reduce the volume of calls displaying spoofed UK mobile numbers over the coming months. It will not affect nuisance calls placed by legitimate UK businesses from legitimate UK numbers — which, for care homes, remain the larger problem.
Most nuisance calls received by UK care homes are not spoofed. They are placed by real businesses — recruitment agencies, equipment suppliers, insurance brokers, service providers — using legitimate UK numbers. These callers target care homes specifically because they know someone will answer.
Ofcom's Global Titles ban is aimed at scam calls that impersonate UK numbers — typically financial scams, HMRC impersonation, parcel delivery fraud and similar. These calls do reach care homes, but they are a smaller share of the nuisance-call load than sales and recruitment callers.
So while the ban is a welcome development for the wider telecoms ecosystem, care home managers should not expect a dramatic drop in their day-to-day call interruptions. The volume of legitimate-but-unwanted calls will continue roughly as before.
The Global Titles ban sits alongside several other Ofcom measures now in force:
Call Line Identification guidance has been extended to require phone providers to block international calls that display a UK landline number as a presentation number. This removes a route that had previously let overseas callers appear to be calling from a UK landline.
Enforcement powers remain significant. Ofcom can investigate companies making nuisance calls and issue fines of up to £2 million per breach. In practice, however, most nuisance calls fall below the threshold of formal enforcement.
Mobile messaging scam rules have been strengthened. Around half of UK mobile users reported receiving a suspicious text between November 2024 and February 2025, and roughly 100 million suspicious messages were flagged to mobile operators through the 7726 service in the year to April 2025.
The overall direction is toward closing signalling loopholes and raising the cost of spoofed traffic. It is not toward reducing the volume of legitimate commercial calls — which remain lawful as long as they follow Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and the relevant marketing consent rules.
Do not rely on regulation alone to solve the call-interruption problem. Most of the calls that waste your carers' time are from legitimate UK businesses. The Global Titles ban will not stop those.
Track the volume. Most care homes have no idea how many nuisance calls they receive per week. Without that baseline, it is hard to know whether anything is improving.
Put a screening layer in front of the phone. AI call monitoring listens to calls as they come in and identifies which are nuisance versus genuine, without changing your phone system. Silent Guard provides this layer and delivers a daily Morning Brief so you can see exactly what arrived, what was filtered, and what needs your attention.
Review your own records. Under CQC's assessment framework, call activity is evidence of how a home manages communication with families, partners and the public. A timestamped record of every call is useful beyond the nuisance-call question.
Will the Global Titles ban stop sales calls to my care home? No. Most sales calls come from legitimate UK businesses using legitimate UK numbers. The ban addresses spoofed calls that fake a UK number from overseas — typically scam traffic, not sales traffic.
Does Silent Guard rely on blocking specific phone numbers? No. Silent Guard analyses the content of each call to identify whether it is genuine, nuisance or unknown. It does not depend on spam-number lists, which are ineffective against calls from real UK businesses.
What should I do if I receive a scam call that still appears to come from a UK number? Hang up, do not provide any details, and report it to Ofcom or to your phone provider. The 7726 service can be used to flag suspicious messages.
Where can I find the Ofcom guidance on nuisance calls? Ofcom publishes consumer guidance on its website covering nuisance calls, CLI rules and the 7726 reporting service.
CareTime's Silent Guard is available now for a 30-day pilot. £49, 1-page pilot letter — exit by reply-email.
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