UK DEATH NOTIFICATION GUIDE

in the UK, currently, once you have sadly lost a loved one you then need to straight away think about going through the difficult and mainly manual task of informing of the death to government agencies (i.e. HMRC, DWP, DVLA, the Passport Office, the Local Council etc), financial institutions (i.e. banks, building societies, share registrars etc), and Utility companies (i.e British Gas, BT, Sky etc). Then there are the social media and email providers that can sometime be forgotten (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Outlook etc). They all have their own requirements on how to notify them that someone is deceased.

There are some automated death notification processes set-up  for example the “Tell-Us-Once” service by the UK government.

Most of the larger UK banks are signed up to a central bereavement notification website  –  The Death Notification Service. That works for initially notifying them but then each bank will have their own specific requirments to follow before they will release monies to any beneficiaries.

From personal experience the process of informing various institutions of a bereavement in the UK can be a difficult and mentally stressful admin process.

There are no standardised requirements, there is no central hub where you can load the registered death certificate. We can only hope that in the future this will be developed, especially given the current sad situation of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We found the whole process of notifying a death in the UK to be very difficult, time-consuming and highly stressful. With this in mind we have created this website, NowTheAdmin.co.uk to help anyone going through a bereavement to have one place to refer to covering this difficult administrative task.

In our personal experience, preparation is the key. So below we have created a section covering the important steps to think of when beginning the process. Then we have created a detailed page covering the 1st steps to consider and information to gather before starting bereavement notification process.

On this website you will also find an overview below in the section “List of who to notify” and again followed this up with a detailed page covering who to contact and how to contact them. Here, for your convenience,  we have created a list of bereavement notification links and telephone numbers for government institutions, financial institutions and utility companies (as available at 28th June, 2020). We will keep these updated regularly.

It is our sincerest hope that the information put together for you on this website may, even if a little, help reduce the stress and burden over the administration process and that you can at least find most of what you need to consider when going through the death notification process in the UK and knowing firstly who to contact and  secondly how to then inform the necessary institutions.

We have also created a “Glossary of terms” section covering the jargon used when notifying a bereavement.

Finally, for your convenience we have create a Berevement Checklist page where you will also find the checklist in PDF format for you to download.

Our thoughts are with you to help you get through his very difficult time.