DWP Bereavement Service: what it does and when to contact it

What is the DWP Bereavement Service?

The DWP Bereavement Service is the Department for Work and Pensions' telephone service for reporting a death, and GOV.UK describes its job as cancelling the person's benefits and entitlements, including their State Pension, and checking whether the caller is eligible for help with funeral costs or other benefits.

It is also the number GOV.UK gives for claiming Bereavement Support Payment by phone and for claiming a Funeral Expenses Payment, and GOV.UK adds that the adviser will help with any other bereavement benefits you might be entitled to. If your husband, wife or civil partner has died, GOV.UK also suggests ringing the service to check whether the death affects benefits you already get. Our guides to the widows pension and Bereavement Support Payment and to the Funeral Expenses Payment explain who qualifies for each and how much they pay.

The service only deals with benefits paid by the DWP, which means questions about the person's tax go to HMRC's own Bereavement Helpline, whilst their bank accounts and household bills sit outside government altogether and have to be dealt with separately.

Do you need to call the DWP if you have used Tell Us Once?

Usually not for the person's own benefits, because GOV.UK's Tell Us Once guidance says the service passes the death to the DWP so that benefits and entitlements such as Universal Credit or the State Pension are cancelled. The registrar gives you a reference number when you register the death, and GOV.UK says you must use it within 28 days or it expires. Our guide to Tell Us Once covers what it reaches and what it leaves out.

There are, however, several situations in which you need to ring the Bereavement Service, or one of its equivalents, either instead of Tell Us Once or as well as it:

• Your own benefits are affected. GOV.UK says anyone getting benefits or entitlements linked to the person who died must contact the office that pays them separately, which will explain how their payments might be affected.

• You want to make a claim. Tell Us Once tells departments about the death so that the person's payments stop, whereas the Bereavement Service is the route GOV.UK gives for checking your own eligibility and claiming by phone.

• The reference number has expired, or you left the DWP out. Tell Us Once can only be used once, so any department you did not select has to be told directly.

• The person lived in Northern Ireland or permanently abroad. Tell Us Once is not available for either, so GOV.UK directs deaths of people living abroad to the International Pension Centre, whilst Northern Ireland has its own Bereavement Service, covered below.

If an inquest means the death cannot be registered yet, GOV.UK says you can still use Tell Us Once by asking the coroner for an interim death certificate and then asking a registrar for a reference number, which our guide to the interim death certificate explains in more detail.

What is the DWP Bereavement Service phone number?

The number is 0800 151 2012, and GOV.UK's page on reporting a death without Tell Us Once lists the full set of contact routes as follows (checked in November 2026):

• Telephone: 0800 151 2012

• Welsh language: 0800 731 0453

• Relay UK (if you cannot hear or speak on the phone): 18001 then 0800 151 2012

• British Sign Language: a video relay service, linked from the same GOV.UK page

• Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm

The current GOV.UK pages do not list a separate textphone number, so Relay UK is the route to use if a voice call is not possible. The same 0800 number also appears on GOV.UK with hours of 8am to 5pm for changes to an existing Widowed Parent's Allowance claim, and some older pages elsewhere still give a textphone number or other hours, so it is worth checking GOV.UK before you call. If the person was living abroad when they died, GOV.UK says to contact the International Pension Centre instead, which it lists on +44 (0) 191 206 9390, also open Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

What should you have ready before you call?

GOV.UK does not publish a checklist for this call, so the closest official guide is the information that Tell Us Once and the Northern Ireland Bereavement Service ask for, which includes:

• The person's name, date of birth, date of death and National Insurance number.

• Which benefits they were getting, including the State Pension.

• Contact details for their husband, wife or civil partner (or their next of kin if there was no partner) and for any executor or administrator, sharing a partner's details only with their permission.

• If they died in a hospital, care home or hospice, its name and address and whether they had been there for 28 days or longer.

If you are claiming Bereavement Support Payment on the same call, GOV.UK says you will also need your own National Insurance number, your bank or building society details, the date your partner died and your partner's National Insurance number. Keep the person's bank statements and passbooks safe too, because the DWP may ask for them later when it checks for overpayments.

What happens to State Pension and benefit payments after a death?

The DWP cancels the person's benefits once it knows about the death and then works out a final figure, which can leave money owed to the estate or an overpayment to repay. The reason is timing, because the State Pension is normally paid in arrears: the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987 say the new State Pension is paid in arrears, as is the older State Pension for most people who reached pensionable age from 6 April 2010, although some older awards can be paid weekly in advance. A payment that arrives after the death can therefore cover some days when the person was alive, which belong to the estate, and some days afterwards, which are an overpayment.

Our guide to Attendance Allowance after death works through that split with an example, and the same logic applies here. Under regulation 30 of the same regulations, benefit that was due to the person but not paid before they died can be paid to, among others, their personal representatives or next of kin, and a written application is normally needed within 12 months of the death, although not where the person was getting the State Pension or Pension Credit and no executor or administrator has been appointed.

Any overpayment is recovered from the estate. GOV.UK's guidance on repayments when someone has died says the DWP will write to whoever is dealing with the estate once probate has been granted, may ask for bank statements, building society passbooks or other information about the person's assets, and will calculate any overpayment on the probate figure before deductions if that information is not provided. The examples it gives are all things the DWP was not told about, such as savings above what was declared or a stay in hospital or a nursing home. Where the overpayment happened because a payment arrived before the DWP was told of the death, its Debt Management team contacts the next of kin, the bank the benefit was paid into and whoever is handling the estate.

The same page is clear that you should not distribute the estate until you know what needs to be repaid, because if you do you may have to pay the money back yourself. If you think the DWP has got the figure wrong, you can ask for a mandatory reconsideration, which GOV.UK's overpayments guidance says you usually need to request within one month of receiving the overpayment letter.

Could the DWP owe the estate money?

It can, either because benefit for days before the death had not yet been paid, as described above, or because of a past underpayment. In 2020 the DWP identified that some people who were married or widowed when they died, or who were 80 or over, may not have received increases they were entitled to, and GOV.UK's guidance on underpaid State Pension for someone who has died explains how families can ask about it.

The DWP wrote to the next of kin or executors it knew about between 11 January 2021 and 31 December 2024. If you are the next of kin or executor and have not heard from it, you can contact the Pension Service on 0800 731 0469 (for someone who lived in Great Britain) with the person's full name, date of birth, date of death and last address, plus the full name of their husband, wife or civil partner where relevant and, ideally, their National Insurance number.

A surviving husband, wife or civil partner who is over State Pension age may also be able to get extra State Pension through the person who died, which GOV.UK says to check with the Pension Service, and our widows pension guide sets out who can.

Who do you contact in Scotland and Northern Ireland?

Scotland works much as England and Wales do, with one extra body to tell, whereas Northern Ireland has its own system run by the Department for Communities.

Scotland

The DWP still pays benefits such as the State Pension in Scotland, whilst Social Security Scotland deals with benefits from the Scottish Government, such as Scottish Child Payment, and can also check whether you can get help with funeral costs. Tell Us Once notifies both, and if you cannot use it the Social Security Scotland number is freephone 0800 182 2222 (or +44 (0)1382 931 000 from outside the UK), with Contact Scotland BSL for British Sign Language users. Social Security Scotland's contact page on mygov.scot gives its phone hours as 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday except bank holidays. In Scotland the Funeral Support Payment has replaced the Funeral Expenses Payment, and overpayments made by Social Security Scotland follow a different process from the DWP's.

Northern Ireland

Tell Us Once is not available in Northern Ireland, so the Department for Communities Bereavement Service is the number to ring. nidirect's guide to the Bereavement Service says it records the date of death and tells each office that paid the person a benefit, and that it checks whether you can claim Bereavement Support Payment, a Funeral Expenses Payment or a Child Funeral Fund payment, asking for the person's date of birth, date of death, National Insurance number and the benefits they were getting. The Department for Communities' Bereavement Service contact page lists:

• Telephone: 0800 085 2463

• Relay UK: 18001 then 0800 085 2463

• Sign language: a video relay service for British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language users living in Northern Ireland

• Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, closed at weekends and on bank holidays

State Pension questions for someone who lived in Northern Ireland go to the Northern Ireland Pension Centre, and GOV.UK says overpayments there are handled by the Department for Communities' own Debt Management service rather than the DWP.

What to do next

1. Register the death and use Tell Us Once within 28 days if you can, selecting the DWP as one of the organisations to notify.

2. Ring the Bereavement Service on 0800 151 2012 if you cannot use Tell Us Once, if your own benefits are affected or if you want to check what you can claim (in Northern Ireland, ring 0800 085 2463).

3. Tell the bank that received the benefits about the death, bearing in mind that the DWP may contact that bank about any payment made before it knew of the death.

4. Hold back enough estate money to cover a possible overpayment until the DWP has confirmed its figures in writing.

5. If the person was married, widowed or 80 or over when they died and the DWP has not written to you, ask the Pension Service whether they may have been underpaid State Pension.

The DWP only deals with the benefits and pensions it pays, whereas the person's bank, energy supplier, phone provider and insurers carry on as normal until each of them is told, and each will want its own notification. If you would rather not ring them one by one, Legacy Trail's free notification service notifies private-sector companies on your behalf, and our guide to what an executor does covers the rest of the estate work.