In this guide
The first few days
If the death was expected — for instance, in a hospital or hospice — staff will usually guide you through the immediate next steps. If it happened at home or was unexpected, call 999. If the cause of death is unclear, a coroner may need to be involved before you can register it, which can add a short delay before the funeral can be arranged.
Immediate practical steps
- A doctor confirms the death and issues the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death
- Tell close family, and the person's employer if they were working
- You can contact a funeral director when you're ready — there's no need to decide everything immediately
Registering the death
In England and Wales, a death must usually be registered within 5 days (8 days in Scotland). If a coroner is involved, this can be extended — speak to your local register office, who deal with this regularly and won't rush you.
What you'll need to bring
- The Medical Certificate of Cause of Death
- The person's NHS number, birth certificate, and marriage or civil partnership certificate, if you have them — it's fine if some details are missing
- Details of their occupation and last address
The registrar will give you a death certificate and a "green form" (Certificate for Burial or Cremation), which your funeral director will need. Order more certified copies than you think you'll need — most guides recommend 5 to 10. Banks, pension providers, and insurers usually require an original or certified copy, not a photocopy, and ordering extras later costs more than ordering them upfront.
Using Tell Us Once
The single most useful service most people don't know about
Tell Us Once lets you report the death to most government departments in one go, instead of contacting each one individually. The registrar gives you a reference number when you register the death.
It typically notifies:
- HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
- The Passport Office and DVLA
- Your local council (council tax, electoral roll, Blue Badge)
- Some public sector pension schemes
Available in England, Scotland, and Wales — not Northern Ireland, which has a separate bereavement service. Use it at gov.uk/after-a-death.
Who else you'll need to contact
This is the part nobody warns you about clearly enough: Tell Us Once does not cover banks, insurers, pension providers, or utility companies. Most people end up contacting somewhere between 20 and 40 separate organisations. Having the right account details to hand makes this dramatically faster.
Banks & building societies
To freeze or close accounts. Many will release funds for funeral costs before probate is granted.
Insurance providers
Home, car, life, and travel policies — life insurance claims often need to start early.
Pension providers
Both state and any workplace or private pensions.
Mortgage lender or landlord
To discuss the property and next steps.
Utility companies
Gas, electricity, water, broadband — take final meter readings.
Council tax
You may be entitled to a discount or exemption if the property is now empty.
Employer
For final pay, pension contributions, and any death-in-service benefit.
Subscriptions & memberships
Easy to forget, but they keep charging until cancelled.
This is exactly the situation where having a single, organised record of accounts and providers — rather than reconstructing it all from old post and emails — makes a genuine difference to how long this stage takes.
The will and probate
If a will exists, it names an executor — the person responsible for administering the estate. If there's no will, the rules of intestacy decide who can apply to administer it, and who inherits, which is rarely the same as what the person would have wanted.
For most estates, the executor will need to apply for probate — the legal authority to access accounts, pay debts, and distribute the estate. In England and Wales this is currently done online at gov.uk, and you'll need to value the estate and address any Inheritance Tax position first, even if none is ultimately due.
Simple estates typically take 6–12 months from death to final distribution, sometimes longer if the estate is complex or property needs to be sold. This is normal — it doesn't mean anything has gone wrong.
In the weeks that follow
Once the most urgent steps are done, a few things are worth doing in the following weeks rather than the first few days:
- Register with the Bereavement Register to stop most unwanted marketing post addressed to the person who died.
- Check what financial help you might be entitled to — bereavement support payments exist depending on your relationship to the person who died.
- If they had a registered Lasting Power of Attorney, this automatically ends on death — the attorney should notify the Office of the Public Guardian. See our full guide to LPAs if this applies to your situation.
- Take your time with personal accounts and subscriptions — social media, email, and similar things rarely have a deadline, and can wait until you're ready.
If you're finding this overwhelming, that's a completely normal response
Bereavement is exhausting in ways that have nothing to do with how organised you are. If you need to talk to someone, Cruse Bereavement Support (0808 808 1677) and the Citizens Advice bereavement service both offer free, practical guidance alongside emotional support — and there's no obligation to handle any of this alone.
If you're reading this for someone else, in advance: the single biggest favour you can do your own family is making sure this information is somewhere they can actually find — not assumed, not "in a folder somewhere." Our guide to the full household document checklist is a good place to start.
Make this easier for your own family
Everplace keeps account details, providers, and your will in one place — with an executor able to find exactly what they need, when they need it.
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