How Tell Us Once works

When you register a death, the registrar will offer you Tell Us Once. It is a free service run by the government, and it means you report the death once, online or by phone, and the departments that need to know are told for you. Without it, you would ring HMRC, the pension service, the DVLA, the Passport Office and the council one at a time, with the same certificate, telling the same story.

You do not have to use it. Nearly everyone does, because it takes half an hour and replaces a week of calls.

What Tell Us Once covers

The service tells the following organisations, and each one updates its own records without you contacting it again:

• HM Revenue and Customs, for tax and for any tax credits
• The Department for Work and Pensions, for the state pension and any benefits
• The Passport Office, which cancels the passport
• The DVLA, which cancels the driving licence
• The local council, for council tax, housing benefit, the electoral register, the blue badge and library membership
• Public sector pension schemes, where the person had one, such as the NHS, the armed forces or teachers’ pensions
• Social Security Scotland, for a death in Scotland

It also stops payments that should stop. A state pension paid after a death has to be repaid from the estate, and that is the single most common piece of bereavement admin that goes wrong when nobody uses the service.

What Tell Us Once does not cover

It reaches government. It does not reach anyone else. You or the executor still have to tell:

• Banks and building societies
• Private and workplace pension providers, apart from the public sector schemes above
• Insurers
• The employer
• The landlord or mortgage lender, and the utility, phone and broadband companies
• The TV Licensing office, which is not part of the service
• Subscriptions, memberships and the mail

Who to notify when someone dies is the full list of those, with what each will ask for.

Where Tell Us Once is available

England, Scotland and Wales. It is not available in Northern Ireland. There, the Bereavement Service tells the benefit and pension offices in one call, and HMRC, the DVLA, the Passport Office and the council are told separately; NI Direct lists them.

How to use Tell Us Once, step by step

Step 1: register the death

The service starts at the register office. When you register the death, the registrar will explain Tell Us Once and give you a reference number. Some registrars can complete it with you there and then, if you have the details to hand.

Step 2: gather the details

You will need your loved one’s date of birth, their National Insurance number, their passport number and driving licence number if they had them, and details of any benefits or services they were receiving. You will also need the name and address of their next of kin and of the executor, and permission from those people to pass on their details.

Step 3: report online or by phone

Online is the GOV.UK Tell Us Once page, using the reference number. By phone it is the number the registrar gives you. Either way it takes about half an hour, and you can save the online form and come back to it.

Step 4: the departments confirm

Each organisation writes to confirm what it has done. If a department you expected to hear from stays silent for a month, ring it directly; the service is reliable but it is not instant.

Is Tell Us Once compulsory?

No. It is optional and free. You can tell every department yourself if you prefer, and in Northern Ireland, where the service does not run, the Bereavement Service covers the benefit offices and you tell the rest.

What if I did not use it when I registered?

You can still use it, as long as the reference number is within its 28 days. After that, contact each department separately, which is slower but works.

Does Tell Us Once cover the TV licence, the bank or the utilities?

No. Those three questions come up more than any other and the answer to all of them is the same: Tell Us Once is government only. TV Licensing, the banks and the utility companies each have their own bereavement process, and the notification guide above links to them.

The Tell Us Once service is the one piece of admin after a death that is genuinely simpler than it sounds. If the cremation itself is still to be arranged, direct cremation step by step explains what happens from the first call, and if your loved one is to be taken home to another country, start with repatriation step by step.

Tell Us Once is step four of the eight in what to do when someone dies, which puts it beside the three that come before it.