Tell Us Once: the free service that notifies government departments of a death

One phone call instead of a dozen

Tell Us Once is a free government service that reports a death to most government organisations in a single step. Instead of separately contacting HMRC, the Department for Work and Pensions, the DVLA, the Passport Office and the council, you give the details once and the service passes them on. The registrar sets it up when you register the death, either completing it with you there and then or giving you a unique reference number so you can do it yourself online or by phone. Everything here is general information rather than legal or financial advice, but the mechanics below are straightforward and worth knowing before you sit down with the registrar.

The full list of what it notifies, according to GOV.UK's Tell Us Once guidance:

• HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), to deal with the person's tax
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), to stop benefits and State Pension payments
• Passport Office, to cancel the passport
• DVLA, to cancel the driving licence and remove the person as keeper of any vehicles
• The local council, to cancel Housing Benefit, Council Tax Reduction, a Blue Badge, inform council housing services and remove the person from the electoral register
• Veterans UK, to cancel or update Armed Forces Compensation Scheme payments
• Social Security Scotland, for deaths in Scotland, to stop devolved benefit payments

It also notifies most public sector pension schemes, including NHS Pensions, the Armed Forces and Civil Service pension schemes, Local Government Pension Schemes and the Scottish Public Pensions Agency schemes, so that pension payments stop or switch to any survivor's benefits.

The reference number and the 28-day window

The service is anchored to death registration. When you register the death, the registrar will explain Tell Us Once and either run through it with you at the appointment or give you a unique reference number. That number is your key to the service, and it has a shelf life: GOV.UK states you must use the service within 28 days of getting your reference number, either online or by phone.

To get through it in one sitting, have to hand the deceased's date of death, their National Insurance number if known, passport number, driving licence number and vehicle registrations, plus details of any benefits and public sector pensions they received. You will also be asked for the name and contact details of the executor or administrator, and details of a surviving spouse or civil partner (their National Insurance number or date of birth). If you are not the next of kin or the executor, you should have their permission before giving their details. For where this sits in the wider sequence of early tasks, our companion piece on registering a death step by step covers the appointment itself, and the first 30 days for executors guide sets out the fuller checklist around it.

Scotland yes, Northern Ireland no

Tell Us Once covers deaths in England, Scotland and Wales. In Scotland the service works the same way through the registrar and additionally notifies Social Security Scotland, which administers devolved benefits. It is not available where the person was living in Northern Ireland when they died, or where they were living permanently abroad. In those cases you have to notify each organisation yourself; Northern Ireland's nidirect service publishes its own equivalent guidance for contacting government departments after a death. A handful of English and Welsh councils also sit outside the scheme, and the registrar will tell you if yours is one of them, in which case the same do-it-yourself rule applies.

What Tell Us Once does not cover

The service only reaches government. Everything commercial still needs a direct notification, usually supported by a certified copy of the death certificate: banks and building societies, private and workplace pension providers, life insurers, utility and phone companies, landlords or mortgage lenders, and the person's employer. This is why registrars suggest buying extra certified copies at registration rather than ordering them later.

Timing matters more than it looks. Until the DWP is told, benefits and State Pension keep arriving, and anything paid after the date of death is normally repayable by the estate. Using Tell Us Once promptly stops those overpayments accruing as debts that the executor must settle before distributing anything. It does not, however, start the probate clock by itself: applying for the grant is a separate process that begins once the estate has been valued. Our probate guide walks through those stages, and the probate timeline estimator gives a realistic sense of how long the whole administration is likely to take once the early notifications are done.

Where it fits in the bigger picture

Tell Us Once is a small, genuinely helpful piece of automation at the start of a process that gets more demanding as it goes: gathering death certificates for the probate application, valuing the estate, reporting to HMRC and applying for the grant. If you are handling an estate and want a second pair of eyes on the steps after the notifications, a probate specialist can take the administrative weight while you deal with everything else a bereavement brings. We can put you in touch with one who handles estate administration day in, day out.