What to do when someone dies at home and the death is unexpected:

• Call 999 immediately to inform the emergency services.
• Following your call, the police will be notified as a matter of course and will carry out a routine visit to the property in order to identify the circumstances of the death. (In the cases of unexpected deaths, a coroner has to be notified so that they can establish the cause of death and police investigations can help this process.)
• Depending on the circumstances of the death, the coroner may need to arrange for a post-mortem examination to be carried out which can lead to some delay in arranging a funeral.