You can cold call on a Sunday in the UK as far as PECR is concerned. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 set no calling hours for live marketing calls, and they do not mention Sundays or bank holidays at all. PECR controls who you may call (numbers on the TPS or CTPS, and people who have told you to stop), not when. What limits timing is softer. Ofcom can act on persistent misuse of a phone network, and for calls to consumers, consumer law counts timing as one factor in whether selling is harassment. Australia is the contrast, because it fixes telemarketing hours in law.
This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice.
What UK law says about calling hours
PECR does not say when you may call. I searched the full revised text of the regulations on legislation.gov.uk for "Sunday", "bank holiday", "evening", "night" and "time of day", and none of them appears. The word "hour" turns up four times, always in rules unrelated to calls, such as the deadline for reporting a data breach.
Regulation 21 is the rule for live marketing calls, and it is about the number, not the clock. You must not call a line whose subscriber has told you not to call. You must not call a number on the TPS or CTPS either, unless the subscriber has told you they do not object to calls from you. The only time period in regulation 21 is the 28 days a newly registered number has before the rule bites, covered in the TPS 28-day rule. What makes a call unlawful in the first place is set out in are cold calls illegal in the UK.
Can you cold call on a Sunday?
PECR has no Sunday rule, so a live call to a screened number on a Sunday breaks no part of it. The Sunday law people half-remember is the Sunday Trading Act 1994. Its Schedule 1 restricts the Sunday opening of large shops, meaning shops with a floor area over 280 square metres. It has nothing to say about phone calls.
Lawful is not the same as welcome, though. A business line on a Sunday usually rings in an empty office. A home or mobile number on a Sunday reaches someone in their own time, and that is where the softer tests below start to matter.
Bank holidays and evenings
The answer is the same. PECR does not mention bank holidays, and it has no evening cut-off. A call at 7pm on a bank holiday Monday is judged under regulation 21 exactly as a call at 11am on a Tuesday. What counts is whether the number is on the TPS or CTPS and whether the person has opted out.
One rule does apply to every marketing call, at any hour. Regulation 21(A1) requires you to show a number on the called line, or present a number you can be contacted on. An evening call from a withheld number breaks that rule because of the number, not the hour.
Where timing does matter
Two other laws can make the time of a call relevant, though neither sets hours.
Ofcom and persistent misuse
Ofcom is the other regulator for phone calls. Under section 128 of the Communications Act 2003, a person misuses a network if the effect, or likely effect, of their use is to cause another person "unnecessarily to suffer annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety". Misuse is persistent when it is repeated often enough to show a pattern of behaviour, or recklessness about whether people suffer that annoyance. Section 130 lets Ofcom impose a penalty of up to £2,000,000.
Sections 128 to 131 do not mention times of day or days of the week. The test is about patterns of annoyance, not the clock. Repeatedly calling people at hours that annoy them is the kind of pattern the test is written for, but no provision names an hour. Section 131 requires Ofcom to publish a statement of policy on how it uses these powers. What that regime means for diallers and abandoned calls is in AI cold callers and auto-diallers under PECR.
Consumer law and aggressive selling
For calls to consumers, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 applies. A consumer here is an individual acting wholly or mainly outside their business, so this part is B2C only.
Consumer law does not set hours either, but it does list timing as one of the things a court or regulator weighs when deciding whether a sales practice is harassment. Section 228 says a practice is aggressive if it uses harassment, coercion or undue influence, and that in deciding this, account must be taken of "the timing and location of the practice". An aggressive practice is unfair, and so prohibited, if it is likely to make the average consumer take a decision they would not otherwise have taken.
Schedule 20 goes further. It lists practices that are unfair in all circumstances, and paragraph 28 is "making persistent and unwanted solicitations by any means", except where that is justified to enforce a contractual obligation. That ban applies whatever the hour.
UK and Australia compared
Australia fixes calling hours in law. Section 8 of the Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 applies to telemarketing calls to Australian numbers:
| Question | UK | Australia |
|---|---|---|
| Weekday hours | No rule in PECR | 9am to 8pm |
| Saturday | No rule in PECR | 9am to 5pm |
| Sunday | No rule in PECR | No telemarketing calls |
| Public holidays | No rule in PECR | No calls on New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, or a weekday holiday given in lieu |
| Whose time counts | Not applicable | The time where the account-holder usually lives |
| Exceptions | Not applicable | Express consent in advance to a call on that day or at that time |
The Standard also leaves room for state and territory laws that can operate alongside it. Time zones, state rules and UK-to-Australia calling windows are covered in how to cold call in Australia, and the register itself in the Australian Do Not Call Register.
Sensible calling hours for B2B and B2C
With no legal hours in the UK, the choice is yours. This is how I would set it.
- B2B: call in business hours. That is when the buyer is at a desk and the switchboard is staffed. Outside them you are likely to reach voicemail or a closed switchboard.
- B2C: keep to daytime and early evening. Avoid Sundays and bank holidays. Complaints, the Ofcom test and the consumer law test all turn on annoyance, and a call during someone's day off is the easiest way to cause it.
- Honour time requests. If someone says "call me after 4", note it on the record and call after 4.
- Use the recipient's time zone. For an international list, schedule by where the person is, not where your team sits.
Inside business hours, the best blocks for your market are something to test, not guess. The method is in step 6 of how to cold call in the UK.
The rules that do apply at any hour
The rules that carry fines in the UK apply at every hour of every day. Screen each number against the TPS and CTPS, and re-check it within 28 days. Keep a do-not-call list and stop calling anyone who asks. Show your number, or one you can be contacted on. Our free TPS check covers one number at a time; TPSClear screens every number in your CRM and re-checks it before the 28 days are up.