Restricting access to posts or categories…

Hi, All.

I was wondering if anyone knows a plugin that would allow me to disallow access to certain posts. The posts could be in any category.

It would be nice to also have the same plugin, disallow access to a whole category (and remove it from sight) should i require it too.

I’ve tried a few but they all seem to only disallow access to whole categories but don’t do both. That or they will give you options to allow but not disallow (which is not the same thing). For example one plugin i tried, gave me a list of usernames and by it, lists of categories with check boxes next to it. So i could pick which ones they could view, however this is difficult when managing lots of users or categories and when new categories or users are created, i would have to go in and tick all of the relevant boxes again.

It almost requires a sort of access level restriction. So for example, each user would be assigned a number from 1 to 10 in addition to their role (e.g. Subscriber or Editor etc.) and this number would allow them access to whatever i have decided they could access at that level.

The site i would implement this on is not public and does not allow registrations (only the admin can create users) and so i suppose, does give me a slight amount of control.

Does anybody know of a plugin that exists or several that might work well together?

Any help would be much appreciated.
Many thanks in advance!
Jack.