Farra is a death administration assistant for UK families. Get step-by-step guidance for registering a death, applying for probate, notifying banks, and managing bereavement admin. From essential documents to practical checklists, Farra simplifies estate paperwork and funeral-related tasks so you can focus on what matters.
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In England and Wales the MCCD is completed by a doctor who attended the deceased in their lifetime, then scrutinised by a medical examiner, who notifies the registrar of the cause of death. You do not collect it and you do not take it anywhere. The hospital bereavement office or GP surgery will tell you when it has gone across, and only then can you book the registration appointment.
The Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) is a legal document completed by a doctor that confirms the cause of death. The death cannot be registered until the registrar has it — but in England and Wales it reaches them through the medical examiner, not through you.
In England and Wales, the MCCD is completed by a registered medical practitioner who attended the deceased in their lifetime. The old requirement that the doctor must have seen the deceased within the previous 14 days was removed on 9 September 2024, so a death is no longer pushed to the coroner simply because nobody saw the person recently enough.
Northern Ireland has not adopted the medical examiner system and keeps its own rules, including the 28-day attendance requirement. In Scotland there are no medical examiners: the doctor sends the MCCD straight to the registrar, and around one in eight certificates is reviewed afterwards by the Death Certification Review Service.
The hospital bereavement office arranges for the doctor to complete the MCCD and passes it to the medical examiner's office. The bereavement office will ring you when the registrar has been notified.
Contact the GP surgery. The GP who attended the deceased completes the MCCD and it goes to the medical examiner in the same way. There is nothing for you to collect from the surgery.
The care home contacts the GP, and the certificate follows the same route through the medical examiner to the registrar.
Wait until you are told the registrar has been notified before booking your appointment. Turning up earlier will not speed anything up, because the registrar has nothing to register yet.
Delays can occur if:
If you experience delays, contact the bereavement office or GP surgery for an update.
Since 9 September 2024, every death in England and Wales that is not referred to a coroner must be scrutinised by an independent medical examiner. The medical examiner checks the proposed cause of death, speaks to the next of kin, and then notifies the registrar.
This matters for your deadline as well as your paperwork. The five days you have to register the death run from the day the registrar is notified — the "relevant date" — not from the day the person died. If scrutiny takes a week, your five days start after that.
The circumstances that must be notified to a coroner are set out in regulation 3 of the Notification of Deaths Regulations 2019. They include where:
"Nobody had seen them in the last 28 days" is no longer one of them — that trigger was withdrawn in September 2024.
If a coroner is involved, they take over from the doctor and the medical examiner, and issue the paperwork the registrar needs. In Scotland the equivalent referral is to the Procurator Fiscal; there are no coroners.