When someone has passed away
Register the death
You need to do this at a Register Office. See gov.uk/register-a-death for more details.
Legally, you’ll need to register a death within five days in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and within eight days in Scotland, unless the Coroner is investigating it. You’ll be issued with a death certificate.
It’s a good idea to ask for several certified official copies of the death certificate as you may need them for different providers. There’s a small charge for this but it is often more cost effective to ask for copies at the time of registration rather than later on.
Notify us
We will need to know:
- Details of the deceased person: their name, address, date of birth, date of death, whether there is a Will and any Skipton account numbers (if known)
- Details of the person notifying us: their name, address, relationship to the deceased person, email address, phone number and when we should contact them (we only call if we need more information or if you ask us to)
- Any additional information you want to give us.
You don't need to send any documents by email. If we need to see documents such as a death certificate, we will let you know how to send these to us.
The person dealing with the estate will have a personal contact every step of the way, who will try and make things as easy as possible.
Once you've told us about a death, even if it is not officially registered with us, payments out of savings accounts held in the sole name of the deceased are frozen. If it's a joint account, control will pass to the other account holder(s) instead.
Provide us with the relevant documents
We’ll need one of the following documents to register the death:
- A death certificate (or a death certificate verification form) directly from the solicitor acting for the estate. Please note, these can only be accepted for our savings and/or mortgage customers. We can’t accept it for Investment customers because product providers need to see the original death certificate
- Original coroner’s interim certificate (if the cause of death hasn’t been determined)
- A Grant of Representation if already available – this can include a Grant of Probate, Letters of Administration, or Certificate of Confirmation in Scotland.
You can post your document to:
Bereavement team,
Skipton Building Society,
The Bailey,
Skipton,
North Yorkshire,
BD23 1DN,
We will return the documents to you, once we have processed them.