Let the council and government organisations know about a death (Tell Us Once)

You can use the Tell Us Once service to let the council and government organisations know that a person has died. They’ll tell the relevant departments and services about the death, and the services that person was receiving will be stopped.

This means that you do not have to contact each organisation and department separately. The Tell Us Once service does that for you.

When someone has died, there are lots of things that need to be done, at a time when you probably least feel like doing them.

One of these is contacting the government departments and local council services that need to be told.

When you register the death the Registrar will give you a unique reference number so you can use the Tell Us Once service.

You’ll need the Tell Us Once reference number that you got from the registrar.

You’ll also need the following details of the person who died:

• surname
• date they died
• name, address and contact details of the person or company dealing with their estate (property, belongings and money), known as their ‘executor’ or ‘administrator’
• if there’s a surviving spouse or civil partner, the name, address, telephone number and the National Insurance number or date of birth of the spouse or civil partner
• if there’s no surviving spouse or civil partner or their spouse or civil partner is not able to deal with their affairs, the name and address of their next of kin
• if they died in a hospital, nursing home, care home or hospice, the name and address of that institution.

Read the full list of what you’ll need to provide on Tell Us Once (GOV.UK).

Tell Us Once (GOV.UK)

We’ll tell the following council services about the death:

• Housing Benefit
• council tax  
• collection of payment for council services
• libraries
• electoral services
• Blue Badges
• adult services
• children's services
• council housing
• concessionary travel
• other service areas of the council that may need to update their records.

You can read the full list of the government departments that will be told about the death on Tell Us Once (GOV.UK).

Related services

See also:

• register a death
• death and bereavement support.