DWP bereavement: number

Tell Us Once is the first route: it tells DWP for you. GOV.UK’s Tell Us Once page says it tells DWP to cancel benefits and entitlements, for example Universal Credit or State Pension, and that HMRC and DWP will then contact you about the tax, benefits and entitlements of the person who died.

The registrar explains Tell Us Once when you register the death. GOV.UK’s Tell Us Once page says the registrar will either complete Tell Us Once with you or give you a unique reference number so you can use the service yourself online or by phone. GOV.UK’s Tell Us Once page says you must use the service within 28 days of getting your unique reference number.

You can use Tell Us Once if the person was living in England, Scotland or Wales, including if they died abroad temporarily. You cannot use it if they were living in Northern Ireland or living abroad permanently. The death must have been registered, or reported to a coroner and you have a final or interim death certificate.

If you cannot use Tell Us Once, you must tell the organisations yourself. For DWP, GOV.UK’s page for people who cannot use Tell Us Once says to contact the Bereavement Service to cancel the person’s benefits and entitlements, including their State Pension, and that they will also check whether you are eligible for help with funeral costs or other benefits.

GOV.UK’s Tell Us Once page says it also notifies HMRC (to deal with personal tax and to cancel benefits and credits, for example Child Benefit), the Passport Office, DVLA, the local council, Veterans UK and Social Security Scotland, and some public sector pension schemes. If you cannot use Tell Us Once, GOV.UK’s page for that case lists organisations to contact yourself, each with its own entry, including HMRC (the Bereavement Helpline), the Child Benefit Office in HMRC, DVLA, HM Passport Office, Social Security Scotland and the person’s pension provider. GOV.UK’s page for people who cannot use Tell Us Once says you need to report the death of a child or the parent to the Child Benefit Office within 8 weeks of the death; GOV.UK’s page on what to do if a child or baby dies places the Child Benefit Office in HMRC.

The Bereavement Service number is a freephone 0800 number: GOV.UK’s call-charges page lists 0800 numbers as free, and DWP’s Bereavement Support Payment notes say calls to 0800 numbers are free from landlines and mobiles. GOV.UK’s page for people who cannot use Tell Us Once gives its hours as Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and says nothing about weekends or public holidays.

Email: the pages checked print no email address for telling DWP about a death. The Tell Us Once online start page prints help contact details (a phone number, 0800 085 7308, and an email address) for using that service. GOV.UK’s International Pension Centre page offers an online enquiry form, and says changes to personal details, such as an address or bank details, must be reported by telephone or letter. Neither is described as a way to report a death.

If the person was living abroad when they died, GOV.UK’s page for people who cannot use Tell Us Once says to contact the International Pension Centre instead of the Bereavement Service.

If a child or baby has died, you can use Tell Us Once, but you must tell DWP separately if you get benefits because you are their parent or carer. GOV.UK’s page on what to do if a child or baby dies says to do this as soon as possible and prints the Bereavement Service number.

The Bereavement Service line also takes claims. GOV.UK’s Funeral Expenses Payment page on how to claim says you can claim by phone, must apply within 6 months of the funeral, and that an adviser will also help you claim any other bereavement benefits you might be entitled to. GOV.UK’s Funeral Expenses Payment overview page says you could get it if you get certain benefits and need help to pay for a funeral you are arranging, that the payment will not usually cover all the costs of the funeral, and that Funeral Support Payment has replaced it in Scotland. GOV.UK’s Funeral Expenses Payment claim form page says it applies to England and Wales and that the paper form (SF200) is posted to Freepost DWP Funeral Payments (no postcode or stamp needed) or taken to your nearest jobcentre.

Bereavement Support Payment: GOV.UK’s eligibility page says you must have been under State Pension age and living in the UK (or a country that pays bereavement benefits), married to, in a civil partnership with, or living as if married to the person who died. Your partner must have paid enough National Insurance or died because of an accident or disease caused by work. It is not means-tested. If you were living together but not married, extra rules about children or pregnancy apply. If you are not sure they paid enough, you can still claim: the Bereavement Service will let you know.

Bereavement Support Payment time limits: GOV.UK’s eligibility and “what you’ll get” pages say you usually need to claim within 21 months of the death, and within 3 months to get the one-off payment and all 18 monthly payments. Between 3 and 12 months you get the one-off payment but only some monthly payments; between 12 and 21 months you cannot get the one-off payment but can get some monthly payments. After 21 months you usually cannot get any payments, though you may still be able to claim if the cause of death was only recently confirmed (call the Bereavement Service helpline).

To claim Bereavement Support Payment, GOV.UK’s how-to-claim page says you can apply online, by phone (the DWP Bereavement Service, 0800 151 2012) or by post. Download form BSP1 or ask the helpline to post one. The January 2026 BSP1 form says to return it to Bereavement Support Payment, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton, WV98 2BS, or to your nearest Jobcentre Plus office. That is a claim address, not a place to tell DWP about a death. The GOV.UK page for the form says the helpline can also arrange a printed copy or another format, such as large print, braille or audio CD.

Welsh language: GOV.UK prints 0800 731 0453 as the Welsh language line for the Bereavement Service. The Bereavement Support Payment claim form says “If you live in Wales and want this form in Welsh call 0800 328 1744”, and its notes say the same for “these notes”. The Bereavement Support Payment notes also say “If you want to make a claim by phone in Welsh, call 0800 731 0453”. The Funeral Expenses Payment adult claim form says “If you live in Wales and want this form in Welsh call 0800 731 0453”.

If you are the husband, wife or civil partner of the person who died, you may be able to get extra payments from their State Pension or National Insurance record, but you need to be over State Pension age. GOV.UK’s page on your benefits, tax and pension after the death of a partner says to contact the Pension Service to check what you can claim. GOV.UK’s Contact the Pension Service page, listed in the sources below, has its number and address, and says that if you live in Northern Ireland you should contact the Northern Ireland Pension Centre and if you live abroad the International Pension Centre. What you get depends on whether you reached State Pension age before or after 6 April 2016: before, any State Pension based on their contributions is paid when you claim your own; on or after, you get the new State Pension and may be able to inherit an extra payment (for example half of a protected payment, or part of an Additional State Pension, where the marriage or civil partnership began before 6 April 2016 and other conditions are met). You will not get it if you remarry or enter a new civil partnership before State Pension age.

GOV.UK’s benefit overpayments page says DWP can recover benefit overpayments from a person’s estate, for example if they had more savings or an income they had not declared, or were in hospital or a nursing home and had not told DWP. If you are dealing with the estate, DWP writes to you once probate has been granted. It says not to share out the estate until you know what must be repaid, or you may have to pay the money back yourself. If you do not give the information asked for, the overpayment is worked out on the probate figure before any deductions, which is the whole estate.

If a payment arrived before DWP were told about the death, DWP Debt Management contacts the next of kin, the bank the benefit was paid into and whoever is handling the estate. If you disagree with an overpayment decision, you can ask for it to be looked at again (mandatory reconsideration).

Personal and workplace pensions are not DWP’s. GOV.UK’s Tell Us Once page says Tell Us Once will also contact some public sector pension schemes, which include the Armed Forces Pension Scheme, and that you need to contact personal or workplace pension schemes yourself unless they are one of those public sector schemes. GOV.UK’s page for people who cannot use Tell Us Once says to contact the person’s pension provider as soon as possible if they were getting pension payments, to avoid having to make repayments, to use the Pension Tracing Service to find details of a personal or workplace pension, and to contact Veterans UK if the person had an armed forces pension.

Northern Ireland: GOV.UK’s Tell Us Once page says Tell Us Once is not available if the person was living in Northern Ireland when they died. nidirect says to report the death of someone receiving Social Security benefits, State Pension or Pension Credit to the Bereavement Service, and that you can use it to report a death to the Department for Communities. It records the date of death and tells each office that paid benefit; have the person’s date of birth, date of death, National Insurance number and the benefits they were getting ready. The Department for Communities’ Bereavement Service page, which nidirect links to, gives 0800 085 2463 (for Relay UK, 18001 followed by 0800 085 2463), Monday to Friday 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, closed weekends and bank holidays. GOV.UK’s Bereavement Support Payment and Funeral Expenses Payment pages say there is a different way to apply or claim in Northern Ireland, and its Widowed Parent’s Allowance page says to call the Bereavement Service in Northern Ireland to claim. GOV.UK’s page for people who cannot use Tell Us Once does not say whether 0800 151 2012 takes deaths in Northern Ireland.