What to do when someone dies — a calm guide for the first hours

What to do when someone dies: the essential first steps

Knowing what to do when someone dies removes the worst part of the first hours: the fear of doing something wrong. In truth, the immediate legal steps are few, and everything else — the rites, the paperwork, the arrangements — can be carried by others. What matters most in the first hour is establishing where the death occurred, because that decides who must be called first.

If the death occurred at home

If the death was expected — for example, under GP or palliative care — call the GP surgery (or the out-of-hours service, NHS 111, if the surgery is closed). A doctor or trained nurse will attend to verify the death. This must happen before anything else can proceed. If your loved one was under a district nursing or hospice-at-home team, call them first; they usually manage verification directly.

If the death was sudden or unexpected, call 999. Paramedics will attend, and the police may also come as a matter of routine — do not be alarmed; this is standard procedure for unexpected deaths and implies nothing. The death will be referred to the coroner, and our guide to coroner procedures and post-mortems explains your family's rights from that point.

Once death is verified, call us on 0300 102 1786 — at any hour. We will arrange collection, usually within hours, and explain every next step. Until we arrive, your loved one may remain at home; family members may sit with them, recite Quran, and turn them gently to face the Qiblah if they wish. Nothing must be rushed.

If the death occurred in hospital

Hospital staff verify the death and care for your loved one in the mortuary. The bereavement office — open weekday office hours in most hospitals — prepares the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) and arranges release. Tell the ward or bereavement office two things clearly: that the family's faith requires burial as soon as possible, and that your funeral director is Muslim Funeral Directors. Then call us. We work with hospital bereavement teams across the region daily and will press the process forward from our side, including asking for urgent handling on religious grounds where the hospital offers it.

If the death occurred in a care home or hospice

Staff will arrange verification — usually swiftly, as most homes have on-call arrangements — and will contact the family. Call us as soon as you are ready; we liaise directly with the home so the family does not have to manage any of the administrative steps.

If the death occurred away from home, or abroad

For a death elsewhere in the UK, we arrange collection nationwide and bring your loved one home — or arrange the funeral where they are, whichever the family prefers. For a death abroad, the UK consulate and local authorities become involved; call us early, because bringing a loved one into the UK requires coordination we can begin immediately. Our repatriation service works in both directions.

The first phone calls, in order

• 1. Verification — GP, 111, 999 or care staff, depending on the circumstances above.
• 2. Us — 0300 102 1786, 24 hours. From this call onward, one coordinator manages everything: collection, Ghusl, mosque, cemetery and paperwork.
• 3. Close family — delegate this. Choose one relative to spread the news so you are not repeating the hardest sentence of your life thirty times.
• 4. The mosque — or leave it to us; we coordinate Janazah arrangements with mosques daily.

What does not need doing today

Grief tells you everything is urgent. It is not. Banks, employers, landlords, insurers, subscriptions — all of it waits comfortably for days and is covered step by step in our after-death checklist. Registration of the death must normally happen within five days, and we will help you book it — see registering a death — but even that is not a today task in most cases. Today has only three jobs: verification, one call to us, and being with your family.

A word about the deceased's wishes

If your loved one left wishes — a preferred cemetery, a chosen mosque, Kafan cloth brought back from Hajj, or Death Committee membership — gather what you know and tell us on the first call. If they left nothing in writing, do not carry guilt about decisions; Islam asks the family to act promptly and sincerely, and we will help you make choices your whole family can stand behind.

May Allah grant your loved one mercy and your family patience. When you are ready — now, tonight, at dawn — we are one call away, and from that moment you will not carry this alone.

Three mistakes families make in the first hours — all avoidable

First: waiting until morning to call anyone, out of politeness. Verification services and our own line exist for the night hours; calling at 3am is not an imposition, it is the system working as designed, and hours lost at night are burial days lost later. Second: dispersing the decision-making — five siblings each phoning different offices produces confusion and duplicated grief; appoint one spokesperson for officialdom and let everyone else simply mourn. Third: promising the community a funeral time before the paperwork exists. Announce nothing until we confirm the green form's timing; a retracted Janazah announcement causes real distress and is entirely preventable.