Finding accommodation near a work site you do not know

Finding accommodation near a work site is straightforward when you know the area. When the site is in a town nobody on your side has been to, the hard part is not finding somewhere to stay. It is knowing which of the places that look close actually are.

The basics still apply wherever the site is: start from the site postcode, measure the commute in minutes at the hour people will travel, and describe the vehicles as they are. Our guide to briefing an accommodation supplier shows how to write that down. This page is about what changes when the site is somewhere unfamiliar.

A town nobody on your side knows

Local knowledge is the thing you are missing, and it is usually closer to hand than it looks.

Ask the site before you ask a search engine

The site manager, the client's facilities team or the main contractor have often had people stay nearby before. Ask where they stayed, where they would not stay again, and why. Ten minutes on the phone tells you more than an hour on a map.

Use whoever goes first

If somebody is visiting for a survey or a pre-start meeting, ask them to drive in from where the crew might stay, at the time the crew will, and to look at the parking while they are there. One trip answers questions no website can.

Read the map for barriers, not distance

A river with one bridge, a bypass with one junction, a level crossing or a one-way town centre can turn somewhere that looks five minutes away into twenty-five. Find the routes in before you look at the places.

Look at what is around the door

Somewhere to buy food after a late finish, somewhere to eat, a launderette if there is no washing machine. In a town you know these are obvious. In one you do not, they are the difference between a stay that works and one that grinds.

Big cities add their own version of this: charges and parking rules for vans that no map shows. The pages on contractor accommodation in London and contractor accommodation in Birmingham cover both.

Rural and remote sites

Some sites are a long way from anywhere: a substation, a quarry, a reservoir, a stretch of new road. The questions are different from a town, and four of them decide most of the answer.

1. One base or several? The nearest town with a real choice may be further away than the crew would like. One base there keeps people together and is easier to manage; several smaller places closer in shorten the drive but spread people out and give whoever arranged it more to keep track of.
2. What is open in the evening? Villages near rural sites often have little open after work. If people are cooking for themselves, a proper kitchen and a shop within reach matter more than they would in town.
3. Is there signal? People call home, and the crew may need to be reachable. Check mobile coverage at the place itself, not just in the nearest town.
4. What are the roads like in winter? Rural roads are slower in the dark and in bad weather, and a drive that is easy in good conditions can be a different journey later in the job. Allow for it when you set the limit on the commute.

When the closest places fill up

Sometimes the problem is not knowing the area but sharing it. Another contractor on the same job, a large piece of work nearby or a big event in town can take the obvious places for weeks at a time, and often for the same weeks you need. Four ways round it:

• Ask earlier. If a start date is likely, even if it is not fixed, say so. There is more to choose from before everyone else on the job starts asking.
• Look one ring further out. The next town along may have places the first one has run out of, and a slightly longer drive to a quieter place can be the better stay.
• Split the crew, carefully. Two smaller places can be easier to find than one large one. Keep people who share a van together, and keep the arrangement simple enough for one person to explain.
• Be flexible on the type. If the houses have gone, serviced apartments or a hotel for the first few weeks can bridge the gap, and moving into a house later is a plan rather than a failure.

If the type is the question, serviced accommodation or a hotel sets out how to choose between them for a stay of weeks.

When further out is the right answer

Closest is not always best. Twenty-five minutes on an easy road to a place with parking for the vans and a shop nearby can make a better stay than ten minutes to somewhere with nowhere to park and nothing open after six.

Set the limit before you start looking, and agree it with the people going. Long drives at both ends of a long shift are one of the things that wear people down on a stay of weeks; the welfare guide covers the rest.

Several sites at once, or a crew that moves

Some work does not sit in one place: several sites in different parts of the UK at the same time, or a crew that moves along a route as the job goes. The accommodation is the same problem several times over, and it goes wrong in the gaps between sites rather than at any one of them.

1. One brief format for every site. The same headings each time, so nothing is missed and the requirements can be compared side by side.
2. One person on your side who holds all of them. Several sites with several contacts on your side is how a requirement falls into the gap between two people.
3. A simple record of who is where. The person, the address, the dates and the site, in one place that whoever answers the phone on a Sunday evening can find.
4. The same standards everywhere. Decide once what each length of stay gets, rather than site by site.
5. Plan the moves. When a crew moves from one site to the next, the last night at one place and the first at the next need to line up, with somewhere for the kit in between.
6. Watch every site’s dates. When one site’s dates move, check what that does to the next one before the knock-on arrives.

For the standards by length of stay, see what to put in a corporate accommodation policy. For dates that move, see what to do when they change.

Common questions

How far from a work site should the accommodation be?

There is no single right distance. Agree a limit in minutes at the time people actually travel, then choose between the places that fall inside it. With long shifts and early starts, keep it short. For a long stay on normal hours, a slightly longer drive to a better place is often worth it.

What if nobody on our side has been to the town?

Ask the site team or the client where people have stayed before, and if anybody visits before the start, ask them to drive the route at the real time. You can also hand the looking to us: send the site postcode and the dates.

Is it better to keep the crew together or split them up?

Together is simpler, and it is usually what a crew prefers when the place is right. Split them when keeping everyone together would mean a long drive or a property that does not work, and keep people who share a van in the same place.

Do you only look for accommodation near Peterborough?

No. We are based in Peterborough, but the search starts from your site rather than our office. Send the site postcode and the dates, and if nothing within a sensible commute would work, we will tell you plainly rather than offer a long drive as an option.

In short

In a town you do not know, get local knowledge from the site and from whoever goes first, and read the map for barriers rather than distance. On a rural site, decide between one base and several, and check what is open and whether there is signal. Where the closest places fill, ask earlier and look further out. Where several sites run at once, keep one format, one person and one record.

This is the work we do: corporate accommodation across the UK, looked for from the site outwards. The locations page sets out where we arrange accommodation and how a requirement is handled, and for crews and site teams, contractor accommodation in the UK covers what we look for. How it works explains what happens once a requirement reaches us, and the checklist covers the week before arrival.