Private rooms | Family Rooms | Dorm Rooms
Private rooms | Family Rooms | Dorm Rooms
We are a year-round school trip residential centre for primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities, in addition we open to the general public for 6-8 weeks of the year outside of term time: over Easter and during the summer holidays. Each year we recruit several seasonal work exchange staff to support our housekeeping/night team. In exchange for up to 15 hrs/week of your time we provide you with accommodation and the opportunity to live in the centre of St Ives.
Our positions don’t require you to be a rocket scientist, but whichever one you choose we do expect you to be reliable and friendly and to approach your role in a hardworking, responsible and professional manner.
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Work Exchange positions generally run from April through to the end of October every year.
We have several different roles available at Cohort.
Please note:
Please see the minimum requirement that you must commit to stay for each role.
Due to the nature of our work with schools and educational establishments all work exchange applicants must be a UK resident, and be able to produce 5 years of address history in order to pass a basic DBS (criminal record) check. We will organise all this for you.
Cohort is committed to safeguarding and ensuring the welfare of all visiting students, children and young people and expect all those who work with us to share this commitment. The suitability of all prospective work exchange staff will be assessed during our recruitment process in line with this commitment.
**Please note all of our positions have now been filled for 2026. If you are interested in joining next year please contact us in Jan/Feb 2027**
1 x position available to start between April – October
Night support/housekeeping role description:
Role involves: 2 x night support shifts and 2 x morning shifts
Start time: 9pm 2 nights/week and 10am 2 x housekeeping (morning) shifts a week (set rota)
Minimum commitment: 6-9 months
Want to sleep for free accommodation but don’t mind a bit of responsibility and the odd wake-up call? But also can’t decide whether you’d prefer the housekeping shift?
Have both! We require someone who can support our night warden and do two relief on-call (sleeping) shifts a week in addition to two morning housekeeping shifts.
We require a confident, friendly, professional staff member who is over the age of 21 years with good communication skills who is happy to be on-call and respond to the odd guest contact overnight.
As a responsible accommodation provider, we provide our guests with 24/7emergency access to a member of staff. Sleeping in private staff accommodation you will be contactable in case a trip leader (or guest) requires a member of staff. This is a sleeping shift (with no expectation for staff to stay awake) and includes a quick, evening clean of communal washrooms.
In addition to two on-call shifts you will also join our housekeeping team for two morning (housekeeping) shifts a week. So you’d get all the benefits of the night shift (private accommodation) with the morning shift (sociable).
Please download the detailed role description below:
2 x positions available to start between April – September
Minimum commitment: 2-6 months
1 x short-stay position available for the period: last week in July to the beginning of September
Minimum commitment: 6 weeks
Housekeeping role description:
Start time: 10am – 1pm, 5 days/week (set rota)
We need reliable and happy people to be part of a 3 or 4-person team who will be in charge of room changeovers, room services and cleaning.
We can be a busy place with a educational groups arriving and leaving every 2 – 4 days. Some days there’ll be 0 changeovers on others it could be 40!
We provide our school groups with well-presented and clean rooms and so we’re pretty strict with the housekeeping as it’s a very important aspect of the service we offer our schools.
Please download the detailed role description below:
We are a 60-bed educational accommodation provider located in the centre of St Ives, with 4 beaches and 40+ restaurants, bars and cafes on our doorstep.
We are a school trip residential centre accommodating approx 90 school (primary and secondary), college and university trips a year (mostly art, geography, geology and enrichment trips). We love working with schools. Teachers are great people to work with.
We provide B&B, half-board or full-board residential accommodation, and we support trip organisers to create unique and exciting itineraries.
For approx. 8 weeks of the year, outside of term-time (when schools are off and we have availablity) we open to members of the public and offer budget (hostel-style) holiday accommodation to the town visitors: families, walkers, backpackers, couples and solo travellers.
Cohort is housed in an old Wesleyan chapel. We provide 4, 6, and 8-bed dorm-rooms and private rooms, all with shared washroom facilities.
We are a responsible business and pride ourselves on treating all of our staff fairly and conscientiously; in return we expect certain qualities from our work exchange team members. You must be thoughtful, dependable and friendly and above all reliable, hardworking and be able to work as part of a team.
We ask you to work for up to 15 hrs/week – a fair exchange for free, town centre accommodation in our shared staff dorm room and the opportunity to live-in one of the UK’s most exciting seaside resorts. Your hours and shifts are fixed and organised in a way so that you can find paid work in St Ives. Part of you being with us is to experience living in St Ives and our positions allow you to make the most of our beautiful town, and immerse in our lifestyle, culture, fesitvals and annual events.
‘Cohort’ means ‘a group of people with a shared experience’ – and this is what you would become part of: a team of invaluable people all coming together for an enriching, fun and positive experience in St Ives.
Our staff code of conduct exists to ensure the safety and enjoyment of your time here, as well as promoting a safe and positive environment for everyone staying with us.
In addition to safeguarding the welfare of our younger guests the code of conduct also ensures that staff members work together in harmony.
The code of conduct also includes acceptance of adhereing to our safeguarding policy. The triage of our code of conduct, safeguarding policy and DBS checks demonstrates our responsibility towards the safety of all children, young people and vulnerable adults who stay with us.
Please download and read our code of conduct.
For those who wish to earn money while working with us there are plenty of paid positions available in the town.
St Ives has an abundance of bars, cafes, restaurants and shops so finding paid employment is pretty straightforward: Just come armed with your CV and a smile. We can assist you to find work through our network of contacts or simply by pointing you in the right direction.
Please be aware however that if you do find paid employment it has to work around your shifts with us. We will not change our shift patterns to suit a job. We are your priority and any job accepted cannot interfere with your role with us. Jobs are easy to find in St Ives; accommodation is not.
Situated on the North coast of West Cornwall St Ives is just 20 miles from Lands End in the South West region of the UK. St Ives was originally a small fishing village which progressed to an international centre of modern art in the 1950’s and 60’s and on to become the premier seaside resort it is today.
There are over 60 galleries in St Ives including the Tate, Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Garden, St Ives School of Painting and the Bernard Leach Pottery Studio; it is also home to phenomenal number of restaurants, pubs, bars and cafes.
St Ives has four sandy beaches and they lend themselves brilliantly to a wide variety of water sports from stand-up paddle-boarding to surfing; Cornwall is the UK’s surf mecca with many surf spots in and around St Ives. If that’s not your thing then St Ives is a great place for hiking, exploring and relaxing.
If you’re interested in a work exchange position with us then please get in touch. In the first instance you MUST have read all the above before applying. This will save both our time and yours.
Email the management team on team@stayatcohort.co.uk with your CV, introducing yourself and briefly answering the questions below:
Alternatively fill in the form at the bottom of this page.
Please note that the staff dorm room is a mixed-sex dorm room so decide whether you would be comfortable with this before applying.
Please remember we cannot accept applicants who cannot pass a UK DBS (criminal records) check. Therefore you will need to be able to provide 5 years of (predominently) UK address history.
Applicants will only be considered who have responded in the way we have asked, so please read through everything carefully.