News item

Death Notification Service

The Times: The red tape of bereavement

Kate Palmer

Thousands of bereaved relatives are suffering from heartless bureaucracy and inefficiency from banks, utility companies and pension companies as they try to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.

Jackie Cambridge held a funeral for her mother, Jean, 86, last month. “She had so many friends, but they are older and couldn’t come,” Jackie, 53, says. “Six people came, all sitting apart, and it breaks my heart.”

Jackie, from Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, had power of attorney for Jean, who died from a heart attack in early March. She is now the executor of her mother’s estate and responsible for telling BT, British Gas, Nationwide and NS&I about her death. She also needs to sort out Jean’s council tax and widow’s pension.

It took Jackie 30 seconds to get through to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on the phone, which referred her to Tell Us Once, a government-run service that allows people to report a bereavement in one step. It notifies most government organisations, including HMRC, public sector and army pensions, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, council tax offices and the benefits agency.

It is an unusual example of the public sector being more efficient than the private sector. Reporting a death still involves making several phone calls to banks, energy companies and others.

Banks have started a service that cuts down the number of calls families have to make, but at the moment it applies only to financial companies. The Death Notification Service, which is similar to Tell Us Once, is free and means that people can fill in one form or make one telephone call to notify all banks or building societies with which the dead person had an account.

A total of 18 banks and building societies have signed up, including NatWest, Nationwide, Santander and Barclays, and two challenger banks are set to join soon. The first utility companies should sign up in the summer.

Jackie had to contact all her mother’s utility companies separately. Some, such as Anglian Water, make the process simple, with a dedicated bereavement helpline. Jackie says the person on the end of the phone dealt with her inquiry sensitively.

When she rang BT’s bereavement number, she says she was put through to a generic helpline. BT told Jackie that her mother’s broadband package ran out in May and asked if she wanted to renew the contract, then sent a letter addressed to Jean saying that her direct debit had been stopped and to contact it to arrange payment.

Jackie has been unable to get through to British Gas or locate a bereavement number, but sent a letter enclosing her mother’s death certificate. British Gas returned the certificate without a note and she still does not know if the account is in credit.

“I have some understanding because the coronavirus means these companies have fewer staff,” Jackie says. “But I do worry about how they are handling requests from families who have lost loved ones at this time.”

The biggest problem was with Nationwide, where Jean had a current account. Jackie was registered as her power of attorney. In March, before lockdown, Jackie visited a branch, but staff said that she could not notify them of the death because she did not have ID. She was given an appointment for a week later, but was then turned away because of lockdown, despite having been told that the appointment would go ahead. She has still not been able to close the account.

Campaigners want a single notification service, which would spare relatives the pain of having the same conversations repeatedly with different companies.

“There are data protection issues to be resolved, but there needs to be a way of linking everyone in,” says Steven Wibberley, the chief executive of Cruse Bereavement Care, a charity. “The Death Notification Service is one of those things that is a very well-kept secret: it’s great when it works, but it relies on individual banks and financial services subscribing to it.”

Nationwide says that bereaved customers can notify it of a death in branch, online, over the phone or using the Death Notification Service. It says: “We have contacted Mrs Cambridge to apologise and have offered her £250 compensation for the stress and inconvenience we caused. She has asked for this money to be donated to the Air Ambulance, a charity that her late mother supported.”

BT says: “We know that dealing with the loss of a loved one is incredibly difficult, which is why we have a dedicated phone number and team to help manage the closure of accounts.”

A helping hand

You can use the Tell Us Once service by searching for the online form at gov.uk within 84 days of the death being registered. You will need a few details about the person who died, including their full name, date of birth, national insurance number and next of kin, plus a reference number from the registrar who logged the death; this would usually be passed on in person, but during the coronavirus crisis it will be emailed to you. Make sure that you also have the details of the person handling the estate.

The Times: You shouldn’t have to say ‘my mother has died’ that many times

James Coney

When a loved one dies the admin of sorting out their estate can sometimes make the grief even harder to bear.

It’s not so much dealing with the government — bereavement is one area where public sector service standards excels. All you need to make is one phone call to a government scheme called Tell Us Once, and all the official admin for the deceased is sorted out. It is a marvellous service.

Sadly, no such joined-up thinking exists in the private sector. Despite huge advances in technology it can take dozens of phone calls to sort out an estate; there are quite likely to be several bank accounts, pensions, gas and electric, a phone company, a mobile phone company, an internet provider, TV companies, investment platforms and so on.

Each time you pick up the phone you have to say: “I’m calling because my mum has died,” possibly over and over again until you reach the right department. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows how hard those words are to say. All of this while there is a funeral to arrange.

It doesn’t need to be that way.

Some companies insist on seeing an original death certificate, some will ask for copies. Others want nothing. Many, shamefully, ignore power of attorney instructions. There needs to be much tougher action on this too.

Few customers end up complaining about the shoddy service because, frankly, who wants more bother while you’re still grieving?

To their credit, the banks have already taken huge strides to resolve this, trialling a death notification service with Equiniti, a financial services company. The idea is that you tell a customer’s bank that they have died, and all other organisations in the scheme with which they have accounts are notified. So far this year, 8,754 people have used it, with a total of 23,686 companies notified. Since its launch in 2018 the service has cut out the need for 50,000 phone calls.

It’s time for this to be rolled out to all companies. Sadly, it is those that tend to have the worst service, such as telecoms and energy companies, that seem most reluctant to join.

Banks, credit reference agencies and Equiniti are trusted organisations — they are already used by the tax office to verify customers — so there can be no excuses that they are not trusted by other companies, and that includes smaller banks and building societies that are not yet signed up.

Easing the administration won’t just benefit families, it will benefit all companies too, effectively automating what can be an onerous service.

The regulators Ofcom and Ofgem should insist that its members join this scheme. It’s time to automate and standardise a service, to save bereaved families having to say those dreadful words over and over again.