0114 is the national dialling code for

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

in the United Kingdom. The area it serves includes almost all of the City of Sheffield and some adjacent areas. When

STD code Subscriber trunk dialling (STD), also known as subscriber toll dialing, is a telephone numbering plan feature and telecommunications technology for the dialling of trunk calls by telephone subscribers without the assistance from switchboard oper ...

s were first introduced, Sheffield was assigned the mnemonic 0SH2 (which corresponded to 0742 on a rotary dial), later changing to the corresponding numbers upon the introduction of All-Figure Dialling in the area. Instead of the expected 01742 code, Sheffield's area code changed to the current 0114 code on 16 April 1995, along with 4 other cities in England (Leeds; 0113, Nottingham; 0115, Leicester; 0116 and Bristol; 0117), as part of

PhONEday PhONEday was a change to the telephone dialling plan in the United Kingdom on 16 April 1995. It changed geographic area codes and some telephone numbers. In most areas, a "1" was added to the dialling code after the initial zero. In Bristol, Le ...

. All subscriber numbers within the area code consist of seven digits. The code is used at several telephone exchanges as part of a

linked numbering scheme A linked numbering scheme (LNS) is a dialing procedure in effect in a service area within which call routing between adjacent exchanges does not require a dialing code. The term is only used in the United Kingdom, but not in the North American ...

. In common with all other British area codes the initial '0' is a

trunk prefix A trunk prefix is a digit sequence to be dialed before a telephone number to initiate a telephone call for the purpose of selecting an appropriate telecommunications circuit by which the call is to be routed. Making a domestic (national) telephone ...

that is not required when dialling Sheffield from abroad.

History

Before 1965, Sheffield had 5-digit telephone numbers, with the first digit indicating the exchange area of the telephone line. Sheffield's 6-digit numbers were implemented by prefixing the original 5-digit numbers with a duplicate of the first digit (seen below), other than the 2xxxx numbers which were prefixed by 7 (as seen by the last example). This grouped telephone numbers centrally in the 1 to 9 range with a larger "buffer" at the extremes. Switching to 6-digit numbers produced 90,000 available numbers for each exchange group, providing another 450,000 available numbers after combining both phases, producing a potential 500,000 numbers in Sheffield.

Between regions

Until the 1980s, Stocksbridge, Oughtibridge, and some other areas had 4-digit numbers. Within Stocksbridge and Oughtibridge people dialed only 4-digit numbers, while from Sheffield people dialed prefix 88 for Stocksbridge and prefix 86 for Oughtibridge. From Oughtibridge, people dialed 88xxxx for Stocksbridge and 9xxxxxx for Sheffield. This led to some confusion, leading people to often dial wrong numbers. During the 1980s these local areas were unified into 6-digit Sheffield numbers so that from anywhere in the Sheffield code area, 88xxxx dialed a Stocksbridge number, even from within Stocksbridge. Once the 8-prefix was merged into the full local number this released 8xxxxx numbers.

Transition to 7-digit system

Transitioning to 7-digit numbers in 1995 involved prefixing each 6-digit number with a 2. Immediately after the 1995 change, the corresponding 22x-xxxx numbers became available for allocation, followed by the 20x-xxxx and 21x-xxxx ranges, since the corresponding 0742 0xxxxx and 1xxxxx could not be issued as local numbers can not start with a 1 or a 0, these being the prefix for the operator and area code dialling respectively. The 0114 code allows for a potential maximum of 7,990,000 local numbers to be issued, assuming the use of the entire valid range from (0114) 200-0000 to (0114) 998-9999 country-wide.

Coverage

The 0114 dialing code includes the whole of

except for

Midhopestones Midhopestones (archaic ''Nether Midhope'', also ''Middup'', or ''Middop'') is a village in the civil parish of Bradfield within the Stocksbridge and Upper Don electoral ward in the borough of the City of Sheffield, England. Together with the ...

area which uses the

Barnsley Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough has ...

01226 dialling code and the Fox House area which uses dialing code 01433. The codes extends beyond the City of Sheffield to include the

Killamarsh Killamarsh is a village and civil parish in North East Derbyshire, England, bordering Rotherham to the north and Sheffield to the north-west. Killamarsh is surrounded by, in a clockwise direction from the north, Rother Valley Country Park, th ...

area of

North East Derbyshire North East Derbyshire is a local government district in Derbyshire, England. It borders the districts of Chesterfield, Bolsover, Amber Valley and Derbyshire Dales in Derbyshire, and Sheffield and Rotherham in South Yorkshire. The population ...

and the

Aston Aston is an area of inner Birmingham, England. Located immediately to the north-east of Central Birmingham, Aston constitutes a ward within the metropolitan authority. It is approximately 1.5 miles from Birmingham City Centre. History Aston wa ...

, Aughton, and

Ulley Ulley is a village and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 172. It is located about south of the town of Rotherham and east of Sheff ...

areas of

Rotherham Rotherham () is a large minster and market town in South Yorkshire, England. The town takes its name from the River Rother which then merges with the River Don. The River Don then flows through the town centre. It is the main settlement of ...

Number allocation

Under the

National Telephone Numbering Plan Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the ''National Telephone Numbering Plan'', which is the system for assi ...

the code operates with the following sub-ranges: Sheffield (0114) - 2xx - xxxx numbers have now been exhausted, so new numbers issued now begin with 3 or 4, rather than the old ones being reused. There have reportedly been many problems involving people incorrectly dialing 01142 3xx - xxxx for 0114 3xx - xxxx numbers and therefore being connected to the wrong person or business. The area code is not subject to number conservation and the regulator

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

does not restrict the size of number blocks that are allocated.

Trivia

In 2013, Matthew Helders, drummer of Sheffield band

Arctic Monkeys Arctic Monkeys are an English rock band formed in Sheffield in 2002. The group consists of Alex Turner (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Jamie Cook (guitar, keyboards), Nick O'Malley (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Matt Helders (drums, back ...

, added the 0114 dialling code to the cover of his drum kit, as an ode to the band's hometown.

References

External links

Guardian article

Sheffield Star article showing people incorrectly dialling area code as 01142 and getting wrong number for new (0114) 3xx xxxx numbers.
{{Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom 114 Sheffield