What To Do When Someone Dies: UK Guide to Make the Bereavement Notification Process a Little Easier

Dec 7, 2020 | Advice, Guide, What to do when someone dies | 0 comments

Difficult bereavement notification process in the UK

What I Learned about notifying a death in the UK after my father passed away

If you have been come to this website after losing someone close to you then please know I understand what a difficult time this is. Now it may be that you are going through the process of notifying the death to the various organisations and authorities and looking for advice on what to do. I hope our website provides you with some guidance and hopefully can save you some time.

The first element of advice is to decide whether you need to apply for probate. Depending on the valuation of the deceased’s estate you will need to apply for probate. See our webpage under the Legal & Tax section for an explanation of probate. There is also a section that can be found covering “applying for a probate” that explains in greater detail.

The following links are also worth reading which covers advice around probate as well as inheritance tax:

Link to UK Government website – Probate: General Enquiries
Link to Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert – Guide to Probate
Link to UK Government website – Inheritance Tax: General Enquiries

I also suggest having some understanding of the various terms used which are important to understand when someone has passed away. You will find the following webpage that covers a glossary of some of the most important terms that may be worth reading through.

Informing Organisations in the UK of a Bereavement

I want to be honest with you, this is a difficult process, it can be very intense with lots of form filling, endless telephone calls, chasing up, working out what ID you need and understanding which forms to complete. The whole death notification process in the UK is very time consuming and can take anywhere between 6 months to 18 months to complete all the notifications. Then when you think you’re almost done then another form arrives to complete or you remember another organisation that you forgot to inform.

Are Any of the Notification Processes Automated?

Firstly the good news! It’s not all manual. The UK government and some of the big UK banks have set-up some sort of an automated process. So we should begin with these.

UK Government Tell Us Once Online Service

UK Government – Tell Us Once Online Portal

I just can’t understand, given all the technology we have, how the bereavement notification is not automated. At least though, the UK government has put together a really good portal for notifying government agencies of a death called the “Tell Us Once” service. This should be your first port of call and the link to go to first. Notifying the various government departments and local councils of a death should be your starting point.

UK Death Notification Service for Banks & Building Societies

UK Banks & Building Societies – Automated Death Notification Service

The major UK banks and building societies have also taken the road to automating the process of notifying a person’s death via their death notification website. The current list of financial institutions that you can notify via this online service are as follows:

  • Bank of Scotland
  • Barclaycard
  • Barclays
  • Cahoot
  • Clerical Medical
  • First Direct
  • Halifax
  • HSBC
  • IDEM Servicing
  • Leeds Building Society (NB. this does NOT include Leeds Permanent Building Society accounts)
  • Lloyds Bank
  • M&S Bank
  • MBNA
  • Moorgate Loan Servicing
  • Nationwide Building Society
  • Natwest
  • Paragon
  • Rothesay Life
  • Royal Bank of Scotland
  • Santander
  • Scottish Widows
  • The Mortgage Works
  • UCB Home Loans Ltd

The latest full list of banks and building societies can be found here. They’ve also created a quick YouTube video guide on how the death notification service works:

Video Time Stamp [00:00:02.74]

Hello and welcome to our quick guide on how to use the online death notification service, this simple and Easy to Use online portal, which is supported by a dedicated customer service bereavement team, allows family members and friends to provide the notification of death to multiple member organisations without having to contact each one individually. The online services available 24 hours a day. Three hundred and sixty five days a year. First of all, you will be asked to provide the details of the person that has died.

Video Time Stamp [00:00:34.47]

This will include information like their full name. Their usual or last known address, which can be entered manually or by using the in-built address lookup facility. Their date of birth. And finally, their date of death. If you know the date of the funeral, then this information can be entered, although this is not mandatory. We ask this, the organisations that you choose to contact avoid getting in touch with you around this time. You will also be asked to provide details of the death certificate number, although, again, this information is not mandatory.

Video Time Stamp [00:01:43.71]

You will now be asked to provide details about yourself, including your full name. Your current address. Your date of birth and a contact number. You can also provide your e-mail address, should you wish to do so, this is not mandatory, but it will be needed if you choose to create an account at the end of the process. We recommend that you create an account that this will allow you to make further account detail updates to the notification during the following 90 days.

Video Time Stamp [00:02:47.97]

Now you can choose the member organizations that you wish to contact by selecting them from the drop list. Here, we will start by adding Natwest. The sort code and account number are not mandatory. However, they do help the organisation to validate the request. You can notify as many organisations as necessary by adding them one after the other. Here, we will add the details of three further accounts across three different organizations. Once you have added all of the organizations that you wish to contact, click on next and you will be able to review and edit the information that you have provided so far.

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Once you are happy, you will be able to submit the notification with or without creating an account, as we mentioned earlier in this video, we would recommend that you do create an account so that you can add further account details if necessary. Once your notification has been submitted, you’ll be able to print off a summary page, which includes details of what happens next, as well as the unique reference number associated to your notification. It is important that you keep this in a safe place because you may need it should you ever contact us in the future.

Video Time Stamp [00:04:49.57]

And that’s it, if you need further information on the service and the organizations that can be notified by using it, then please visit www.deathnotificationservice.co.uk. Thank you for watching.

It is an excellent starting point in that it allows you to notify, in one go, each of the above financial institutions where the deceased friend or relative held any type of account via this online portal.

However, you should note that then each institution will contact you directly to follow their own individual bereavement notification process. So it’s certainly a good thing to start here, you should also be aware that there is potentially much form filling, telephone calls and admin that will still be required by these financial institutions.

Here on our website NowTheAdmin.co.uk I have also listed direct telephone numbers and financial institution web links (where available) for making contact with their bereavement teams directly. These can be found via this link – Details of financial institutions bereavement teams. Here you will also find the contact details for the bereavement teams for not only UK banks and building societies but also UK share registrars.

The above two are the only two services, currently, that have any kind of automated process in place in the UK. NowTheAdmin.co.uk would really like to see much more of this difficult manual process automated. More on that at the end of this post.

Advice on making the bereavement notification process easier

The advice given here is from personal experience. Taking a systematic approach and having a dedicated notebook to write everything down from the deceased’s passport numbers to reference numbers and telephone numbers for bereavement teams will help you and indeed may save you time in the long run.

What to do when someone dies in the UK – Preparing

This is so important. Preparation really is the key to saving time as well as for getting through all the notifications in as a quick a time as possible. Otherwise you may experience 2 steps forward and 1 step back. You are likely be inundated with forms to fill in, many will need to be completed by hand and sent by post. I do suggest sending any important forms and documents as signed for via Royal Mail rather than normal snail mail. You’ll want to avoid the risk of any important documents being lost in the post.

Being prepared, so that you know exactly what you need to do to notify a death in the UK, is so important. I’ve created a dedicated webpage covering this, which you will find via this link – Preparing for the UK death notification process page.

Bereavement Notification Document Checklist

Gathering the paperwork in advance

There are a number of things worth gathering and noting down. This will make life easier for knowing which organisations you need to inform of a death. Getting together the following information will save you time finding these details each time as you will no doubt be asked for the same information over and over again.

I suggest that the key items of the deceased to gather in advance are as follows:

  • their original Death Certificate (it is worth obtaining more than one original to save you time in the long run
  • a note of the death certificate number
  • their National Insurance number
  • their NHS number
  • their date and place of birth
  • their date and place of death
  • their date of marriage or civil partnership (if applicable)
  • their will (if they left one) – noting any nominated executors of the will
  • their tax reference number (if applicable)
  • their passport number (if applicable)
  • their driving licence number (if applicable)
  • their vehicle licence plate number and the vehicle log book – V5C (if applicable)
  • their bank account details
  • their property landlord or mortgage details (if applicable)
  • their insurance policy details (if applicable)
  • their employer details (if applicable)
  • their share and/or investment account details. including any paper share certificates (if applicable)

The above list is by no means the only details you will find helpful to gather as preparation but it is a good starting point. Having the above details will make your bereavement notification process a little easier for you.

I have created a web page covering the importance of preparing in greater detail here – Preparation for notifying a death. Within this page there is greater detail explaining the reason for gathering the information before you start any death notification process. This can be found here – Information to gather – The list.

Who else do I need to inform of a bereavement in the UK?

I have already mentioned above the need to inform the UK government as well as the deceased’s bank and/or building society.

Once the bank is informed of a death they will then be able to provide you with a list of any direct debits that the deceased paid regularly. This is an excellent list to go through as it will not only list the organisations that you should inform of the bereavement but the direct debit list will also have any reference numbers relating to their account held with any particular organisations. These reference numbers will come in handy for informing these organisations of a bereavement.

There may be a number of utility companies for gas, electric, broadband / telephone, mobile & TV companies to inform of the death. Contact details for these organisations can be found here – Utility Company Bereavement Team Contact Details

Social Media and Email Account Bereavement Notification Links

You may find that the deceased also had email, online services and social media accounts that should also be informed. I have created a list of the major providers bereavement notification links and contact details which can be found here at the bottom of this list – Informing Email, Online and Social Media Accounts of a death.

Also don’t forget to locate any paper share certificates that the deceased may have held. These can be located by any dividends paid into their bank account or by any postal communication regarding company AGM’s. There are three main share registrars in the UK. I have listed their contact details here – Share Registrar Bereavement Team Contact Details.

Making a bereavement checklist on who should be notified of the death

Once you are at the stage of having all the deceased’s paperwork to hand and you have an idea on to notify of the bereavement then it’s probable a good idea to create a list of the various organisations.

These can generally be broken down into various categories such as;

Personal – Such as the deceased’s employer, GP, dentist, optician, accountant, solicitor, friends, neighbours, membership clubs, church etc
Government Organisations – Only where the UK government Tell Us Once service is not being used
The Deceased’s Home – Mortgage provider, landlord, letting agent, Royal Mail post redirection service, electricity / gas providers. TV, landline / broadband providers, milkman, etc
Financial Organisations – Banks, Building Societies, insurance companies, pension providers credit cards, rental goods providers
Other – Social media accounts, email addresses etc

Find a UK Bereavement Checklist

You will be able to find a few different checklists online. I have also created a downloadable bereavement checklist page that you can print and follow, if that is easier. You will also find a bereavement checklist PDF document that can be downloaded on the same page. Look for the orange button on this page where you can download this death notification checklist.

Finding Organisation Contact Details

Once you have noted down a list of the specific organisations that should be notified of the death you will need to search for bereavement contact details. Some organisations will prefer the bereavement notification via an online link and others via a dedicated bereavement team telephone number. More detail on this can be found via this link.

Tax and Legal matters after a bereavement

The main items of consideration are whether the deceased left a will, who the nominated executor(s) are, who the beneficiaries are (the spouse or other persons) and whether the estate is left in a trust. These, along with having an idea of the valuation of the estate left behind then dictates whether a probate is required (See also link above on probate and tax). I cover some the tax and legal considerations on this webpage but this is by no means comprehensive and I suggest always doing your own research as well as taking professional advice based on your own specific circumstances.

Please also see the UK government website on Inheritance Tax as well as on their latest guidance covering Death and Bereavement, for the latest information.

Dealing with Grief

Losing someone close to you can affect everyone very differently. For some the grief can be instant whereas for others it can take some time before the it has any effect. One thing for sure is that it’s different for everyone.

Video Links on dealing with the death of a loved one

I have found a couple of videos that cover this really well and for anyone wanting to try to understand coping with the death of a loved one then these may be worth a watch.

Final Thoughts on What to do When Someone Dies in the UK

Losing someone close is very difficult the whole bereavement process is not easy and then add the admin burden of notifying a death in the UK can really test even the most calmest person.

I hope the advice based on my personal experience will help some of you on working out what to do when someone dies. You have my personal condolences and sympathy on having to now go through the UK death notification process. I sincerely hope that one day we will see a time that this whole administrative task can be greatly automated.