The Organisations Tell Us Once Will Never Contact

Tell Us Once does not cover the private sector. It tells the government that someone has died, and it does that well — but it does not tell a single bank, insurer, pension company, utility, landlord or subscription service. If it has a contract and a payment attached, it is still the family's job to notify it, one organisation at a time. So the honest answer to what Tell Us Once does not cover is: almost everything that is actually costing the estate money.

What the service genuinely does is spare you from repeating the worst news of your life to a string of government departments. In one session, online or by phone using a reference the registrar gives you, it passes the death to HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, DVLA, the Passport Office, your local council and, where you provide the details, public sector pension schemes. That is a real kindness, and you should use it.

The danger is quieter: assuming it did more than it did. The organisations still pulling money out by direct debit, or quietly letting a policy lapse, are precisely the ones Tell Us Once never touches. Because you cannot do all of them at once, the sensible approach is to order what is left by how quickly a missed one costs the family — money leaving the account, or protection falling away — and work down from there.

What Tell Us Once actually does

It is worth being precise about the boundary, because the whole risk lives on the edge of it. When a death is registered in England, Scotland or Wales, the registrar offers Tell Us Once and gives you a unique reference number. Using it, the service notifies the parts of government that would otherwise each need contacting separately.

In practice that means HM Revenue and Customs for the person's tax affairs, the Department for Work and Pensions for benefits and the State Pension, DVLA to cancel the driving licence, the Passport Office to cancel the passport, and the local council for council tax, the electoral register, any Blue Badge, council housing and adult social care. Where you have the details, it can also reach public sector pension schemes such as the NHS, teachers' and civil service schemes, and armed forces pensions through Veterans UK.

Everything on that list is government. The moment you step outside government — into a high street bank, a life insurer, a private pension, a broadband contract — you are on your own, and nothing you did with Tell Us Once has reached them.

Why you should order the rest by cost

The private-sector list is long, and trying to do it all in the first week is how important things get missed. A far better instinct is to rank it by consequence. Some notifications, left undone, cost the estate money every single day or leave the family legally exposed. Others cost nothing for months. Doing them in that order means the leaks are stopped first and the tidying-up happens when there is more breathing room.

Three broad tiers work well: things still moving money or losing protection now; claims and entitlements that only start when someone asks; and accounts that can safely wait. The rest of this page walks down them in that order.

Do not try to hold the whole list in your head, and do not feel you have failed if it takes weeks. A useful habit is to keep a simple running note of who has been told, what they asked for, and the date — bereavement teams often want a death certificate or a specific reference, and you will be repeating yourself across dozens of organisations. Keeping the record as you go means you can pick the task back up on a bad day without starting again, and it becomes the evidence trail an executor needs later when the estate accounts have to add up.

First: the payments still going out and the cover lapsing

These are the ones to deal with in the first days, because every day they run is a day of money leaving the estate or protection quietly ending.

• The bank and building society. Accounts need to be frozen or flagged, and the direct debits and standing orders paying everything else stop being reliable the moment the bank is told. Tell Us Once does not do this. Digital-only banks are a particular trap because there is no branch and nothing arrives in the post — we cover the routes for those in closing a Monzo, Starling or Revolut account after a death.
• The mortgage or the rent. Neither pauses because someone has died. A mortgage lender and a landlord both need telling directly, and the payments remain due while the estate is sorted.
• Buildings insurance, especially on a home now standing empty. This is the one families most often let slide, and it is among the most expensive to get wrong, because standard cover falls away once a property has been empty for a few weeks and a burst pipe may then not be covered at all.
• Energy and water. Standing charges run on whether or not anyone is there. The suppliers keep billing until they are told and given a closing reading.
• Motor insurance. Cover generally ends when the policyholder dies, which can leave a family member driving the car with no insurance at all without realising it. This one is urgent for a different reason — it is a safety and legal risk, not just a bill.
• Subscriptions paid by continuous payment authority. Recurring card payments can keep retrying even after a card is cancelled, so streaming, app stores and instalment plans need cancelling at source.

There is a reason the bank sits at the top of that list even though it is not the most urgent single item. Nearly everything else on the page is paid from it. Once you notify the bank and the account is frozen, the direct debits and standing orders it was feeding will start to fail, which sounds like a solution but is not a clean one: a failed payment to an insurer can lapse a policy, and a failed payment to a utility can generate arrears and charges rather than a tidy cancellation. So telling the bank is not a substitute for telling each of those companies directly. Do both, and do them close together, so that nothing is left half-cancelled with money still being demanded.

Next: the claims and entitlements nobody triggers for you

The second tier is different in character. Here the risk is not money leaving but money the family is entitled to that simply never arrives, because these payments start only when someone makes a claim. Tell Us Once cannot claim on anyone's behalf.

Chief among them is life insurance. A life policy does not pay out because a death was registered; someone has to find it, contact the insurer and make a claim. That is one more reason to know whether a policy even exists — and if you are reading this having realised there is no cover in place for your own family, you can get life insurance quotes and see what it would take to put that right.

Private and workplace pensions are the same. Tell Us Once reaches public sector schemes when you give it the details, but a personal pension or a former employer's scheme has to be contacted directly, and many carry survivor benefits or a lump sum that is only paid when the family asks. Families are routinely caught out here, as we set out in why Tell Us Once did not tell his pension provider. If the person was still employed, tell the employer too, both for any death-in-service benefit and to close things off properly.

One entitlement that is very widely missed applies to a surviving husband, wife or civil partner: an extra ISA allowance worth the value of the ISAs the person held. It is not automatic and there is a time limit, and we explain how to claim it in our guide to the ISA allowance a widow inherits.

Last: the accounts that can wait, but not forever

The final tier is the long tail of memberships, digital accounts and loyalty schemes. None of these usually costs much or risks anything if it waits a few weeks, so deal with them once the urgent leaks are stopped — but do not forget them, because some quietly keep billing and some hold value or memories the family will want.

This is where broadband and pay-TV contracts, gym and club memberships, charity regular giving, magazine and app subscriptions, and store or catalogue accounts sit. It also covers the digital estate: email, social media, photo libraries and cloud storage, and the licences behind digital purchases. A locked phone and a lifetime of photos can be surprisingly hard to reach — our guides to getting into an iPhone and iCloud after the owner dies and to what happens to a Kindle library and Amazon account explain what is recoverable and what is gone for good.

Does Tell Us Once tell the banks?

No. This is the single most common misunderstanding about the service, so it is worth stating flatly: Tell Us Once does not notify a single bank, building society or credit card provider. Nothing you do with it reaches your money.

There is, however, a separate free service that helps. The banking and finance industry runs the Death Notification Service, which lets you tell several banks and building societies about a death in one online submission rather than contacting each one on its own. It covers many of the largest providers, though not all of them, so treat it as a shortcut for the members it includes rather than a complete solution. Anything not in the scheme still has to be notified individually. Knowing which accounts existed in the first place is often the hardest part, which is exactly why it helps to have a single page telling your family where everything is written down in advance.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The reach of the service itself differs across the UK, and this matters more than any detail on the list above.

In Scotland and Wales, Tell Us Once works essentially as it does in England, offered by the registrar when the death is registered. The government bodies it reaches are the same.

In Northern Ireland, Tell Us Once is not available at all. There is no single government notification to use, so each department — the equivalent bodies for tax, benefits, driving and the rest — has to be told separately. If you are dealing with a death in Northern Ireland, do not wait for a Tell Us Once reference that will never come; start notifying the government bodies directly, and treat the whole private-sector list on this page as yours to work through as well. You can find the wider set of steps in our guide to bereavement admin, assets and contracts.

Frequently asked questions

What does Tell Us Once cover?

It notifies most government organisations in one go: HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, DVLA, the Passport Office, the local council for council tax, housing and any Blue Badge, and public sector pension schemes where you supply the details. The registrar offers it when the death is registered in England, Scotland or Wales. It does not reach the private sector at all.

Does Tell Us Once tell the banks?

No. Banks, building societies, insurers, workplace and private pension providers, utilities, telecoms firms, landlords and subscription services all sit outside it and must be told separately. The banking industry's free Death Notification Service lets you notify several banks in one submission, which helps, but it does not cover every provider, and everything beyond it is still down to the family.

Which should the family do first?

Deal first with anything that costs money or loses protection if it is left: the bank, the mortgage or rent, buildings insurance on an empty house, energy and motor cover. Then move to the claims nobody makes for you — life insurance, private and workplace pensions, and any survivor entitlements. Loyalty schemes, social media and other digital accounts can safely wait until the rest is done.