Certificate

[FirstHit]

Hello,

My wonderful mum died January 2nd.
As far as I'm aware there are no issues the coroner needs to be involved with

I phoned the hospital to ask when the cause of death certificate would be ready to collect so I could register her death. I called Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday but it still wasn't ready.

I thought I had 5 days to register her death?
This is a very difficult time and I don't need more hassle.

Any advice please? This is delaying everything.

Firstly, I'm sorry for your loss, FirstHit.
If you are in England, it is normally 5 days according to advice from .gov website. Bereavement Advice has good advice too.
Hope you get the certificate soon.

Hi Firsthit
I'm so sorry to hear about your mum.
My Dad died on 28th December and we still don't have a death certificate either. We've also called a couple of times and the hospital have been very apologetic but could not give us an indication of when it would be ready. This is Southend Hospital in Essex.

So sorry to hear this. We had a few days delay when collecting the certificate for my DM which caused us stress because we lived a long way from the hospital and needed to tie up picking up the certificate with registering the death in the same area on the same day. Some hospitals just don't seem to understand the difficulty this causes. Has the hospital bereavement officer offered to chase it up and find out why it has been delayed, rather than just saying they haven't got it yet? The certificate is usually prepared by a Doctor who saw the patient on the ward where they died.

There are often problems with death certificates and cremation forms at this time of year as it tends to be on call doctors dealing with patients over the holidays, who may then be more difficult to track down or have days off. The majority of hospitals have also been in complete meltdown this week and all in essential work has been stopped in a number of them. This may account for the delay. The bereavement officer should be able to tell you what the issue is and are usually excellent at tracking down missing doctors. So sorry for your loss.