Registering a death

Registering a Death

Following the implementation of the statutory Medical Examiner service on 9^th September 2024 all deaths occurring in England and Wales where there is no coroner involvement must be referred to the Medical Examiners service for independent scrutiny prior to registration. The Medical Examiner will contact the designated Next of Kin to discuss the cause of death and any concerns they may have before forwarding the paperwork to the relevant register office to allow registration to take place.

Upon receipt of the paperwork from the Medical Examiner/Coroner we will then call the next of kin to offer an appointment to attend to register, deaths should be registered within 5 days of us receiving the necessary paperwork.

If you haven’t heard from us within 2 days of the Medical Examiner 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 so that we can look into this for you.

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.

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 or partner of the deceased,
• a personal representative of the deceased
• a person 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.

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

Correction or change to a completed entry

Please note after the registration has been completed and you have signed the document, any applications to correct the entry will incur a charge.

A charge of £83.00 will be made to consider the request at your local registration office, or alternatively if the request for a correction must be made to the General Register Office, then a fee of £99.00 will apply.

Payment of this fee does not guarantee the correction will be granted and fees paid will not be refunded if the request is denied.

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.