Tell Us Once: Reporting a Death to Government

When someone dies, one of the many jobs that lands on the family is telling the authorities. Tell Us Once is a service that allows the public to report a death to most government organisations once only, rather than phoning or writing to each department separately¹. It is offered through the registrar at the point where the death is registered, and it is free.

The service passes the details on to bodies including HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Passport Office and the DVLA². It will also deal with things like the person's tax and cancelling their benefits, passport and driving licence³. What it does not do is reach banks, insurers, pension providers or other private organisations: those still have to be told directly, and there is a separate route for doing that with banks⁴.

The idea behind the service is simple and has official backing well beyond bereavement. A review of advice provision recommended that a "tell-us-once" initiative be introduced across relevant agencies to improve people's access to advice⁵, and the Public Accounts Committee has recommended a "tell us once" approach for consumers across energy, water and broadband, so that people do not have to tell multiple suppliers about their personal circumstances⁶. Tell Us Once is the bereavement version of that principle, and for most families it removes a layer of phone calls at a difficult moment.

One report to most government organisations

Tell Us Once exists because a death triggers notifications across several separate government bodies, each of which would otherwise need to be contacted in its own way. HMRC needs to know because the person's tax position changes. DWP needs to know because benefits in the person's name have to stop. The Passport Office needs to know so a passport can be cancelled. The DVLA needs to know if the person held a driving licence or owned a vehicle¹. The local council needs to know for services it administers.

Without the service, each of those contacts is a separate task, and the government's own guidance for people who cannot use Tell Us Once sets out just how long the list is: contact the organisations listed there individually¹. The service compresses that list into a single report made online or by phone, using a reference number the registrar gives you⁷.

It is worth being clear about what the single report does and does not mean. It is a notification, not a full settlement of the person's affairs. Departments are told the death has happened, and cancellations follow, but the underlying work, such as sorting out the person's tax affairs or dealing with their estate, carries on separately and often involves further contact with those same departments. The report is the starting gun, not the finish line.

The service is free. Official guidance is also clear that genuine government services do not approach people out of the blue asking for money, and MoneyHelper states it will never contact anyone out of the blue or charge for its services⁸. Anyone asking for a fee to "register a death with the government" is not operating Tell Us Once.

Who Tell Us Once notifies

The core list of organisations the service reaches is set by government guidance. Tell Us Once will notify DWP to cancel benefits, including Universal Credit⁷. The independent support sector describes the agencies covered as HMRC, DWP, the Passport Office and the DVLA². The local council is also part of the picture, because it administers services connected to the person's address and household.

In practice, what each body does with the notification differs:

Some related notifications sit just outside the service. If the person was receiving a devolved Scottish benefit such as Pension Age Disability Payment, the guidance for that benefit asks for changes to be reported to your local authority, HMRC and DWP where you get benefits from those organisations¹⁰. Those bodies may already have been told through Tell Us Once, but benefit-specific changes of circumstance can still require direct contact, so it is worth checking what each benefit's own rules ask for.

Council Tax is a good example of the council's role. Council Tax Reduction, which used to be called Council Tax Benefit, is administered through the local council⁹, and the council is also the body to tell about a stay in a care home for Housing Benefit purposes¹¹. The Tell Us Once report starts that conversation with the council, but the council may come back to you directly about the specifics of the property and any reduction or exemption.

Who can use it: England, Scotland and Wales only

Tell Us Once is available throughout England, Scotland and Wales². It is not available in Northern Ireland, so families there need to let all the relevant organisations know about the death individually². The government's guidance on reporting a change in circumstances for benefits confirms the same point from the other direction: the process is different if you are in Northern Ireland¹².

The territorial limit reflects how the service was built. It runs through the registration systems of England, Scotland and Wales, and consumer-facing guidance in this area is routinely issued for England, Scotland and Wales only, as trading standards guidance on reporting problems confirms¹³. Northern Ireland has its own arrangements, and for certain official notifications there the responsible department is the Department for Justice¹⁴.

For deaths in Scotland, the service works the same way, and mygov.scot confirms that you can use Tell Us Once to deal with things like tax and cancelling your partner's benefits, passport and driving licence³. The registration process before it differs, since deaths in Scotland are registered with the Scottish registrar, but the Tell Us Once step and the reference number that comes with it are the same.

If the person lived in one part of the UK and died in another, the service follows where the death is registered, so a death registered in England or Wales, or in Scotland, can be reported through Tell Us Once even if the person's affairs are spread more widely.

Getting your unique reference number from the registrar

Access to the service is controlled by a unique reference number. A local registrar will give each person a unique reference number and the phone number for Tell Us Once⁷. You cannot use the service without it, and you cannot get the number anywhere else: it is issued at the registration appointment, or in the circumstances described below where a coroner is involved.

The number is your key to the online and phone reporting routes, and it is personal to this death and this report. Government services generally use reference numbers this way, and it is a pattern worth recognising. An appeal to the First-tier Tax Tribunal gets a reference number when it is acknowledged, or immediately if submitted online¹⁵. A redundancy claim for money owed generates an "LN" reference number after the claim form is filled in¹⁶. A Home Responsibilities Protection application gives you a reference number to track the progress of your form¹⁷. In each case the number is what links you to the case, and Tell Us Once works on the same principle.

Keep the number somewhere safe and act on it promptly. One related government process shows why reference numbers matter to deadlines: an Inheritance Tax reference number has to be applied for at least 3 weeks before you plan to send the corresponding form¹⁸. Tell Us Once has its own, shorter window, covered below, and the number is only the entry point, not proof that anything has yet been reported.

How to use Tell Us Once online, by phone or with the registrar

The service is designed to be used once, quickly, from wherever is easiest. The registrar gives you the unique reference number to access the Tell Us Once service online or by phone⁷. That means two routes are open to you from the moment you leave the registration appointment, and both lead to the same single report.

The online route suits people who want to work through the questions in their own time, and the phone route suits people who would rather talk it through. Whichever you choose, the report covers the same ground: the person's details, the benefits they were getting, their passport, their driving licence and any vehicle, and the tax matters that follow from the death. The registrar can also help at the appointment itself, and official guidance on bereavement describes the registrar handing over both the number and the phone number as a single step⁷.

Before you start, it helps to have the person's details to hand: their National Insurance number, their driving licence and passport if they had them, details of any benefits they were receiving, and information about any employer or pension provider. The report is a single sitting, so having the material gathered makes it quicker and reduces the chance of something being missed and needing a follow-up call later.

The 28-day limit on your reference number

The reference number does not last indefinitely. You must use the service within 28 days of getting your unique reference number². After that, the single-report route closes, and you are back to contacting each organisation individually, which is exactly the workload the service exists to avoid.

Twenty-eight days is a common window in official processes, which is worth knowing so the deadline does not catch you out. Credit reference agencies are expected to remove disputed information or explain why they will not within 28 days¹⁹. A review of Discretionary Support in Northern Ireland can be asked for within 28 days of the decision²⁰. Lenders are expected to notify consumers of an intention to register a default at least 28 days before doing so²¹. Not every deadline is 28 days: a mandatory reconsideration of a child maintenance decision can be requested within 32 days of the letter about the decision²². The Tell Us Once window sits in that same band of roughly a month, and it is measured from the day you receive the number, not from the death.

If the window passes, nothing about the death changes, only the convenience. The departments still need to be told, and the government's guidance for people who cannot use Tell Us Once is the map for that: contact the organisations listed there directly¹. It is more phone calls and more letters, but the outcome is the same.

What happens to benefits, tax, passports and driving licences

Once the report is made, each organisation acts within its own remit. DWP cancels benefits, including Universal Credit⁷. The passport is cancelled³. The driving licence is cancelled, and where the person owned a vehicle the DVLA has to be told, which Tell Us Once does as part of the report³.

On the tax side, HMRC picks up the person's tax affairs. HMRC already holds information from employers, pension providers, banks and building societies, which it uses to check how much tax has been paid at the end of each tax year²³. A tax year runs from 6 April in one year to 5 April in the next²⁴. After a death, HMRC may write to the person handling the estate, and if you cannot call the helpline you must fill in form P1000 to tell HMRC who is dealing with the money, property and possessions of the person who died¹. Some notifications happen automatically in the background: HMRC will tell an employer or pension provider if a tax code changes²⁵, and for Child Benefit, HMRC will usually be told automatically about certain changes concerning a child without the parent needing to act²⁶. Where the person received rental income under the non-resident landlord scheme, HMRC sends notices of approval to the person or their tax agent where written authority is held²⁷.

If HMRC opens a compliance check into the person's or the estate's tax affairs, it will call or write to say what it wants to check and why, and will also write to any authorised tax agent²⁸. The guidance is explicit that you can tell the compliance officer what help you need and they will work with you to put in place reasonable or supportive adjustments²⁸, which matters at a point when the person dealing with the estate may themselves be grieving.

On the benefits side, the person's own benefits stop, but the death can also change benefits for people around them, and those changes are the survivor's to report. Benefits calculators such as Turn2us and Policy in Practice cover income-related benefits, tax credits, contribution-based benefits, Council Tax Reduction, Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit, including how benefits are affected by changes in circumstances²⁹. DWP may also write directly: in its closed claims review for New Style Jobseeker's Allowance, DWP contacts people by letter and requires them to call the number at the top within one month, or the review closes and money owed may be lost³¹. Letters like that are separate from the Tell Us Once report and need their own response.

Pensions sit partly outside the service. Tell Us Once does not deal with private or workplace pension providers, so those have to be told directly. If a dispute arises with a pension scheme, the scheme's internal dispute resolution procedure must end with a notification that refers the member to the Pensions Ombudsman with contact details³².

Where Tell Us Once does not reach: banks and private organisations

The service stops at the government's edge. Banks, building societies, credit card providers, insurers, utility companies, subscription services and private pension providers are not told through Tell Us Once, and each has to be contacted directly. For banks specifically, there is a separate notification service that passes news of a death to several banks at once, which reduces the number of calls⁴.

Until the bank is told, accounts stay open and payments can continue. Direct debits may still be taken, and interest may still be paid into the account, which can create tax questions of their own. The practical step is to notify the bank as soon as possible, ask what they need, usually a death certificate, and ask them to freeze the account in the meantime where appropriate.

Access to banking services more widely is a live policy issue, and Parliament has examined access to banking services and cash³³, which matters to bereaved families managing an estate, particularly where they need branch or counter services to pay in estate money or close accounts. Where an organisation holds the deceased person's data, its obligations continue: the Information Commissioner's Office explains that organisations do not always have to tell individuals about a personal data breach, and that it depends on how serious the breach is, the risk it poses and the steps taken to reduce the risk³⁴. A bereaved family member is not always in the loop about data held on the person who died, and the organisation's own notification rules apply.

The other category to remember is anything with a contract attached: phone contracts, gym memberships, insurance policies, subscriptions and credit agreements. None of these is reached by Tell Us Once, and each provider has its own process, usually starting with a death certificate.

If there is an inquest or you cannot use the service

Deaths referred to a coroner cannot always be registered straight away, and Tell Us Once normally requires the death to have been either registered, or reported to a coroner with a final or interim death certificate in your hands². The service has a route for exactly this situation: if you cannot register the death because an inquest is underway, you can still ask a registrar for a unique reference number, and you need an interim death certificate from the coroner first².

That means the inquest does not leave the family stuck with a full list of individual notifications. The interim certificate opens the same single-report route, with the same 28-day window from the day the number is issued. The final certificate, when it comes, completes the record, but the government departments can be told in the meantime.

For anyone who cannot use the service at all, whether because the window has passed, because the death happened in Northern Ireland, or for any other reason, the government publishes guidance on reporting a death without Tell Us Once, listing the organisations to contact directly¹. That list is the fallback, and it covers the same ground: HMRC, DWP, the Passport Office, the DVLA where the person held a licence or owned a vehicle, and the local council¹.

One caution applies throughout the period after a death, because bereaved families are targeted by scammers. The Insolvency Service states it will never randomly contact you to request money³⁵, and the Valuation Office Agency states that if it contacts you about your property it will always mention a specific property by the address, give you a reference number and verify your identity³⁶. Government guidance on staying safe from scammers sets out how to check a contact is genuine⁸, and MoneyHelper publishes guidance on types of scam⁸. No genuine official connected with Tell Us Once will ask you for payment.

Free help after a death

Tell Us Once removes some of the administrative burden, but the wider job of dealing with someone's money and affairs is bigger than one report, and free help exists for it. MoneyHelper, the government-backed money guidance service, is free and states it will never contact anyone out of the blue or charge for its services⁸. The site's own guide to what to do when someone dies walks through the whole sequence, and free bereavement support and helplines lists organisations that offer emotional and practical support at no cost.

Specific tasks have their own guides: registering a death in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and registering a death in Scotland cover the step that comes before Tell Us Once, paying for a funeral and the Funeral Expenses Payment cover help with costs, and being an executor, applying for probate and confirmation in Scotland cover the estate. Tax questions that follow a death are covered in tax after a death, and benefit changes for the surviving family in what happens to benefits when someone dies. For the banks that Tell Us Once does not reach, the Death Notification Service explains the single route for telling several banks at once.