Registering a death

Registering a Death

A death must be registered in the district where the person passed away.  If this occurred within the City and County of Cardiff the certifying medical practitioner should email the medical cause of death certificate to ourselves at registrars@cardiff.gov.uk alongside the name, telephone number and email address for the relative who will register the death in the email.

Once the MCCD has been checked, the registrar will call to arrange a suitable appointment for the relative to attend to register the death in person.

Unfortunately, the emergency legislation that allowed us to register by telephone expired on 24th March 2022; therefore if you are unable to travel to Cardiff  to register, you are able to make an appointment at your local register office and complete a declaration, where you will provide all of the information to the registrar in that district, and they will then forward this on to us in Cardiff for the registration to be completed

If a declaration is undertaken, any certificates you require will need to be ordered directly from us and these will be posted to you once the registration has been completed.

If you haven’t heard from us within 2 days of the hospital/surgery advising they have sent us the paperwork please email us with the name of the deceased, their date and place of death along with your name, relationship and contact telephone number.

Whilst it is a legal requirement to register the death within 5 working days exemptions can be made where processes relating to the Medical Examiner or Coroner’s Office mean that the paperwork required is not able to be provided within that time frame.

In order to register a death you will need to complete the following steps.

Register the death in the district where the death occurs

To register a death you must be:

• a relative of the deceased,
• someone present at the death,
• a senior administrator where the death occurred, or
• the person instructing the funeral director.

Appointments

Appointments take around 30 – 45 minutes, although in some cases the registrar may have to refer to the coroner which could mean that the registration may be delayed.

You will need the following information at your appointment:

• date and place of death
• full name of the deceased and any previous names they have been legally known by including maiden name if appropriate
• date and place of birth of the deceased
• deceased’s occupation and the full names and occupation of their spouse/civil partner
• deceased’s usual address
• if the deceased was married, the date of birth of the spouse
• whether the deceased was in receipt of a pension from public funds

Tell us Once

We also offer the Tell Us Once service. If you would like to utilise this during your appointment we kindly ask you to bring the following where appropriate;

• National Insurance number for the deceased and any surviving spouse/civil partner
• Deceased’s British Passport (Valid or expired)
• Deceased’s Driving Licence
• Deceased’s Blue Badge

Coroners Involvement – If you have been issued with an interim certificate, we are unable to register the death before the coroner concludes their investigations, but if you would like to use the Tell us Once service please email us a photograph/scan of the interim certificate and we can produce a unique reference number for you to be able to use the service.

Arrange the funeral

You can find out more about arranging a funeral in Cardiff on the Cardiff Bereavement Services website.