Distance
About 12 miles from our Burnley office
Typical drive
about 25 minutes
Main route
A682 and A56 via Crawshawbooth
Postcode areas
BB4, OL13
Dialling code
01706 Shared with Rochdale and Todmorden
County
Lancashire

One borough, several towns, lots of very small businesses

Rossendale's economy grew out of footwear, felt and textiles, and the manufacturing thread is still there - along with construction, motor trade, wholesale, care and a long tail of independent retail and hospitality. What stands out statistically is scale: a very large share of Rossendale's businesses employ a handful of people or fewer.

The commercial geography is spread along the valley floor. New Hall Hey in Rawtenstall carries modern office and retail development, Futures Park at Bacup provides business units at the top of the valley, and there are older mill and industrial estates dotted between the towns. Rawtenstall's transport interchange, the M66 running south towards Bury and Manchester, and the East Lancashire Railway all pull the valley towards Greater Manchester as much as towards Lancashire.

For a business of five people, most enterprise IT advice is noise. What actually helps is narrower:

  • A backup you have tested, not a sync folder you assume is one. The 3-2-1 rule is the version to aim at.
  • Email and identity secured properly, because for a small business the most likely serious incident is a compromised mailbox leading to a redirected invoice payment.
  • Phones that follow the people, not the building - which is most of the argument for hosted telephony at this size.
  • Someone to call, at a cost that is predictable.

The valley sides are the technical constraint

Rossendale runs along the bottom of a steep valley with towns and industrial estates climbing the sides. Two consequences follow.

Line length. Where a premises sits a long way up from the cabinet, a copper-based service degrades noticeably. Two units on the same estate can get very different results. It also means the value of a full-fibre upgrade is much higher here than in a flat town where the copper was performing adequately anyway.

Mobile coverage. Signal in the valley bottom, on the tops and in the side cloughs varies by network in ways the national coverage charts do not capture. If your team is out in vans between Haslingden, Bacup and Whitworth all day, that is the test that matters. Choose the network on that evidence, not on a comparison table.

Neither is a reason to expect poor service. Both are reasons to check your specific address rather than accept a general answer.

Working across several small sites

A pattern we see a lot in Rossendale: a business with a workshop in one town, a shop or office in another, and an owner who works from home half the week. Historically that meant three phone lines, three broadband connections and three separate everythings.

The switch-off is a good excuse to fix it. One hosted phone system across all three means:

  • One number answered anywhere, with calls hunting between sites and mobiles.
  • Free internal calls between the sites.
  • An out-of-hours message and diversion controlled from a phone rather than by an engineer visit.
  • No line rental on lines that only existed to make a phone ring.

If you genuinely need a second published number - a separate trade counter line, or an out-of-hours number - that is a configuration, not another line. Our guide to second phone lines covers when it is worth having one.

All of this has to happen before 31 January 2027, when the analogue lines the old arrangement runs on are switched off for good.

What we do for Rossendale businesses

IT Support in Rossendale

Support for the valley's manufacturers, trades and micro-businesses, with on-site cover from Haslingden through to Bacup and Whitworth.

IT Support service Get a it support quote

Cloud Telephony in Rossendale

Hosted phones that let one small business answer calls across several sites or from home, without a system in every building.

Cloud Telephony service Get a cloud telephony quote

Connectivity in Rossendale

Practical connectivity advice for valley-side addresses, where the distance to the cabinet is often the deciding factor.

Connectivity service Get a connectivity quote

Business Mobile in Rossendale

Business mobile chosen on valley coverage rather than national averages - the networks perform noticeably differently between Rawtenstall and Bacup.

Business Mobile service Get a business mobile quote

Guides worth reading before you buy

Frequently asked questions

Which parts of Rossendale do you cover?

The valley as a whole: Rawtenstall, Haslingden, Waterfoot, Bacup, Stacksteads, Whitworth and the villages between. It is about twenty-five minutes from our Burnley office, a little more to the top of the valley.

Is Rossendale on the Rochdale dialling code?

Yes, most of Rossendale uses 01706, which is shared with Rochdale, Todmorden and Littleborough. It surprises people, but it makes no practical difference - the number is yours and it ports to a new system unchanged.

We are a two-person business. Do you take on companies that small?

Yes. What we will not do is put a two-person business on a contract designed for a fifty-person one. Usually the useful work is backup, email security and getting the phones sorted, and it should be priced accordingly.

Our broadband is much slower than our neighbours'. Why?

Most often it is distance from the street cabinet, which in a valley can differ significantly between two premises that look close together. It is worth checking whether full fibre is now available at your address, because that removes the problem entirely rather than mitigating it.

Can one phone system cover our workshop and our shop?

Yes, and it usually costs less than the two separate arrangements it replaces. Calls between sites become free, one number can ring in both places, and you manage it all from a browser.