St Austell, South West • England
St Austell is Cornwall's largest town, set in the south of the county in the South West of England, in the PL postcode area, with the A390 running through it and the A30 a short drive north. Crews on jobs across Cornwall have long used it as a base. KrewBase puts them up in whole serviced houses and flats around St Austell — bills in our name, Wi-Fi tested before check-in, parking checked against the vans, and one monthly invoice to the company.
St Austell has more housing variety than almost anywhere else in Cornwall: Victorian terraces near the old town centre, granite cottages in the surrounding parishes, and plenty of three and four-bed semis on the estates built up around the china clay industry. For crews, the semis and bigger terraces on the edge of town are usually the sweet spot — gardens for drying gear, driveways for a pair of vans, and space to breathe properly after a long shift.
We shortlist St Austell properties that can genuinely take a working crew: off-street parking for the vans, a second bathroom for five or more people, heating systems that stand up to winter shifts, and broadband that passes a speed test. In a town this size there's plenty of stock — our job is filtering out the pretty-but-useless majority before it reaches your inbox, so you only spend time on houses that will actually work.
St Austell sits at the centre of Cornwall's clay country, and work in the wider area covers construction, housing development, energy and grid connections, logistics and local infrastructure — the usual mix that keeps tradespeople moving through mid and east Cornwall on contracts large and small. Healthcare, manufacturing and site-support crews pass through too, often as part of longer jobs based in the town itself.
Because it's the county's biggest town, crews working across the whole South West region often base here rather than in smaller villages: shops, takeaways, laundrettes and suppliers are all on the doorstep, and it's a practical staging point for multi-site jobs where the crew needs a fixed address while the work moves around them from week to week, with one base and one invoice covering the whole crew wherever the work lands.
The A30 passes just north of town and the A391 links straight to it, so crews can reach Truro in around 25 minutes, Bodmin in about 20 and the Clay Country villages in ten. Par station, on the mainline from Penzance to London Paddington, is two miles east — handy for crew arriving from outside Cornwall without losing the best part of a day to the drive down the A30.
For sites scattered across the clay country and towards the Roseland, we shortlist by actual drive time from the site rather than pinning everything to the town centre. Rush hour around St Austell can add ten minutes that a map won't show you, so we measure with real routes and place the crew accordingly — usually on the side of town closest to where the work actually is.
You rent the whole house or flat — no shared rooms with strangers, no per-person pricing, no deposits from the crew. KrewBase holds every bill in its own name: council tax, gas and electric, water, broadband. Wi-Fi is speed-tested before check-in, parking is measured against your vehicles rather than judged from a brochure photo, and five or more people always means two bathrooms.
A weekly clean with fresh linen is standard, maintenance calls come to us day or night, and the company gets one monthly invoice, paid by card. There are no booking fees and no minimum crew size or stay — from a two-person fortnight to a full crew for the best part of a year, the set-up is exactly the same and the paperwork never changes shape.
Send us the requirement — town, dates, headcount, vehicles and any shift pattern we should know about. We come back within 2 hours with a shortlist from property we already hold, not a search we have just started. You pick, we confirm, the crew moves in, and we stay on it for the length of the job. One monthly invoice, card payment for limited companies, no booking fees.
Within two working hours of receiving your headcount, site location and dates. St Austell has the deepest housing stock in Cornwall, so we can usually offer a real choice of whole houses rather than a single option, each with measured drive times from your site and parking already confirmed against your vehicle list before you spend time on it.
Generally the estates on the edge of town — better parking, bigger gardens and easier van access than the older centre. We'll match the area to your site: east side for Par and the mainline station, north for the quickest A30 access. Every option comes with honest drive times so the commute doesn't creep up on you halfway through the contract.
We test every connection at install and again before check-in, and we only shortlist homes where the measured speed supports streaming, video calls and online training. If a property's broadband can't cope, it's off the list regardless of how good the house looks — the crew's evenings matter as much as their commute does to us.
That's the standard arrangement. One monthly invoice covers rent and all bills, paid by card, so your accounts team isn't processing a stack of individual receipts from half a dozen utility companies. There are no booking fees and no per-person charges — the property is the unit, and the paperwork stays simple however many crew rotate through it.
No — we brief every crew on being good neighbours, and we choose properties where comings and goings at odd hours won't cause friction. Crews arriving back at five in the morning after a shift is completely normal to us, and we make sure the house layout — bathrooms, kitchen space, laundry — suits people running on different shift patterns under one roof.
Three things: how many people, where the site is or will be, and the expected start date and duration. With those we can shortlist within two working hours and have a house ready for check-in on day one, with bills already live in our name and the Wi-Fi tested before the first key is handed over to anyone on the crew.
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St Austell sits about 29 miles from Plymouth. Plenty of crews working here base themselves in the city and drive out, especially on longer jobs or when the local supply is thin. Our contractor accommodation Plymouth page covers houses across the wider area — two people or twenty, same service.
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Need beds in St Austell? Send us the dates, the headcount and the shift pattern. We come back within 2 hours with a shortlist from property we already hold.
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