Smarter sharing, better support: Norfolk County Council’s improved approach to sharing death registration data

Norfolk County Council responded to a request from its district councils to improve the timeliness and efficiency of death registration data sharing. This initiative aimed to address delays in service cessation and benefit adjustments following a death, which can have significant financial and emotional implications for families and service providers.

In England and Wales, the General Register Office (GRO) maintains official records of births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships, stillbirths and adoptions. However, the GRO does not have a statutory obligation to notify local authorities of deaths (a specific and limited exception being a weekly report sent to council tax billing authorities, under the Local Government Finance Act 1992). This gap in communication can result in delays in updating records, discontinuing services, and preventing overpayments.

To streamline this process, the public can use the ‘Tell Us Once’ service – a voluntary system administered by the Department for Work and Pensions that allows individuals to notify multiple government departments and local authorities of death in a single step. While helpful, its voluntary nature means it does not cover all deaths, leaving many authorities unaware of recent registrations.

Recognising the need for a more reliable and consistent approach, Norfolk County Council adopted a collaborative strategy. Drawing on expertise of colleagues in information governance and digital services, the council developed an automated process that ensures regular, standardised outputs. This led to the implementation of a weekly data-sharing mechanism, enabling partners to self-service validated death registration data to inform service delivery.

The council leveraged Section 19AA of the Registration Service Act 1953 to establish lawful data-sharing agreements with relevant government organisations. With guidance from the GRO, the process was designed to be fully compliant with legal and ethical standards.

A pivotal role was played by the Norfolk Office of Data and Analytics (NODA) and their data services colleagues within digital services, who acted as an intermediary to design secure data transfer protocols. NODA ensured that only essential information was shared, maintaining data minimisation principles. The team drew inspiration from a similar initiative led by the Suffolk Office of Data and Analytics (SODA), adapting best practices to suit Norfolk’s needs.

Each week, the Norfolk Registration Service:

• generates a Norfolk Death CSV report from the national Registration Online System (RON)
• uploads this to a secure NODA administered SharePoint site.

An automated data pipeline created within the corporate data analytics platform, provided by the digital services team within NCC, is then triggered to execute the relevant data transformation and produce the expected outputs.

Data is then made accessible to authorised users with named access on a secure SharePoint site. This ensures that the data is accurate, relevant and appropriately safeguarded.

The new system has delivered tangible benefits. Six district councils, the NHS and various NCC departments can now:

• access updated records promptly
• close services efficiently
• prevent overpayments or the need to recover funds from bereaved families.

By providing a single, trusted source of validated death records, the process has improved communications with families and representatives, ensuring timely and sensitive engagement.

Implementing this data-sharing initiative was not without its challenges. The team had to navigate complex legal and practical issues associated with handling sensitive personal information.

The main challenges included:

• interpreting and applying guidance from the GRO and internal governance experts
• establishing a separate agreement with the NHS to facilitate a large-scale back-capture of historic data which was required to capture older information
• ensuring proportionality and specificity in data sharing – understanding exactly what information could be shared, with whom, and under what conditions
• adapting the automated process to accommodate the structure of the source data taken from the RON system.

These challenges required careful planning, cross-departmental collaboration, and a commitment to transparency and compliance.