Body repatriation to the UK: the process

When someone dies abroad and is to be brought home, the process has two halves. The first half happens in the country where they died and is governed by that country’s rules: the death is registered there, the authorities there release your loved one, and a funeral director there prepares them to travel. The second half is the UK’s: the documents are checked, the coroner and the registrar do what the law here requires, and a funeral director receives your loved one and takes them to the funeral. This is both halves, in order.

1. The death is registered where it happened

Every country registers a death under its own law, and the local death certificate is the document everything else rests on. The hospital, the police or the funeral director will tell your family what the local procedure is, and the British consulate will tell you what it is in English. You will need your loved one’s passport and your own identification, and you should ask for several certified copies of the certificate, because the UK will want originals.

If the certificate is not in English, it will need a translation. Inside the EU the multilingual standard form under Regulation 2016/1191 can be requested instead, which saves the translation. For most countries the certificate also needs an apostille, a stamp that lets the UK recognise a foreign public document, and the local funeral director obtains it.

2. The local authorities release your loved one

Nothing can leave the country until the authorities there are satisfied. For a natural death in a hospital that is a matter of days. Where the death was sudden or unexplained, a post-mortem, a police enquiry or a court has to finish first, and that is the stage that decides how long the whole process takes. How long does a repatriation take goes through what it depends on, and when a repatriation is delayed covers the usual reasons.

3. Preparation and the sealed coffin

Once released, your loved one is embalmed by the funeral director in that country and placed in a sealed coffin. The UK itself does not require embalming for a body entering the country, but every airline does for a body travelling as cargo, and most European countries require it for a body leaving by road, so in practice it always happens. The funeral director there issues a certificate confirming it, and a certificate confirming the coffin contains only your loved one and their effects, which the carrier and the UK border will ask to see.

4. The documents are gathered

By this point there is a set of papers: the local death certificate and its translation or standard form, the apostille, the embalming certificate, the coffin certificate, the local permit to move a body out of the country, and, where the death was investigated, the release from the court or prosecutor. Where the person was a British national the consulate may issue a document of its own. We check the set before anything is booked, because a missing page at the border is a day lost. What documents does a repatriation need lists them.

5. The transport

From most of Europe we bring people home by road, in our own vehicle, with one team from the funeral director there to our chapel of rest here. From further away it is air: your loved one travels on a scheduled flight, with the documents accompanying them, and we meet the flight at the airport’s cargo terminal. By road or by air explains how the choice is made for your route.

6. Arrival in the UK, and what the law here requires

Two things, and which one depends on the funeral.

If the funeral is a cremation, the coroner for the district where it will take place must authorise it, on form Cremation 6. This replaces the medical certificates a UK death would have had, and it is a form the coroner signs on seeing the foreign death certificate, not an investigation. We obtain it. If the funeral is a burial, the registrar for that district issues a certificate confirming there is no death to register in the UK, and the cemetery accepts that in place of the usual green form.

Separately, if the death abroad was violent, unnatural or unexplained, the coroner may decide to hold an inquest here, and that is the one case in which arrival is not the end of the waiting. What happens when the coroner is involved explains what that means.

From the airport or the border your loved one comes to our chapel of rest, or to any funeral director your family has chosen, and the funeral proceeds as a UK funeral does. If it is a direct cremation with us, direct cremation step by step picks up from here.

Do you need to travel to the country where they died?

Usually not. The local funeral director, the consulate and we can do everything above between us, and the family’s signatures can be given by email. Some families want to go, to see their loved one or to deal with belongings and a hotel or a hospital, and a travel insurance policy sometimes pays for one relative’s flight. It is a choice, not a requirement.

Sending someone the other way

If your loved one died in the UK and is going home to another country, the process is the mirror of this one, with the coroner’s notice at the start rather than the end. Sending someone home from the UK is that guide.

Repatriation, step by step covers both directions in one place, with the steps common to each.