Good local work, on your own terms.
Moorstead helps households across Adlington, Chorley, Horwich and the West Pennine villages with gardening, odd-jobs, decluttering, lifts to appointments and home tech support. We're building the panel of self-employed people who do it — you invoice us for the bookings you choose to take.
Three self-employed roles
Which one sounds like you?
You can put yourself forward for more than one. Plenty of people do gardening and odd-jobs, or driving and tech help — the form lets you pick as many as fit.
All roles are self-employed contractor work, not jobs. You’d be a sole trader or your own limited company, invoicing Moorstead for the bookings you accept.
Self-employed · flexible
Property & Garden Helper
£20/hr standard · £28/hr last-minute cover
The practical, tool-based work: mowing, hedges, gutters, seasonal tidy-ups, flat-pack, shelving and minor repairs.
- Your own tools and transport
- Comfortable working alone in someone's home and garden
- A trade background helps; being reliable matters more
Optional add-on: decluttering and house clearance, which needs an extra conversation at interview — it's sensitive work.
Self-employed · flexible
Community Driver
£20/hr standard · £28/hr last-minute cover
Lifts to GP, hospital, dental and optician appointments, shopping trips and prescription collection — waiting with people during short appointments.
- Full clean UK licence and a comfortable, reliable car
- Hire & Reward motor insurance (we'll point you at brokers) and Chorley Council private hire licences
- Patient, unhurried, good company on the way home
This isn't a trade job. Previous community transport, carer or client-facing experience is ideal but not required. Lifts & Errands starts taking bookings in November 2026.
Self-employed · flexible
Home Tech Helper
£20/hr standard · £28/hr last-minute cover
Wi-Fi and routers, TVs and streaming boxes, smart speakers, phones and tablets, and setting up video calls with family.
- Genuine comfort with everyday consumer tech
- Able to explain it without jargon, patiently
- No IT qualifications needed
Fits well around study or another job. Patience matters more here than anything on a CV.
What we offer, and what we ask
Straight answers before you apply.
You pick the work
Bookings are offered through our job system with the job, the client, the time and the rate shown before you accept. Nothing is assigned without your agreement, and turning one down needs no explanation.
Paid on a predictable cycle
You invoice us weekly or fortnightly in arrears and we pay by bank transfer. Never cash from a client, and never chasing us for it.
£15 each way for referrals
Bring us someone good who completes onboarding and you both get £15.
Free to work elsewhere
No exclusivity and no minimum hours. Keep your own customers, take work from anyone else you like — plenty of the panel run their own round alongside us.
Worth being clear about
What “self-employed” means here.
Some people come to this wanting a job, and it isn’t one. Better to say so plainly now than have you find out in week two.
What it gives you
- You accept or decline any booking, with no explanation needed and no consequence for saying no
- No minimum hours, no shifts, no rota
- You use your own tools, your own vehicle, your own way of working
- You’re free to work for anyone else, including your own customers, at the same time
- You invoice us; we pay by bank transfer weekly or fortnightly
What it asks of you
- You’re responsible for your own tax and National Insurance, and for registering with HMRC as self-employed
- You carry your own public liability insurance
- There’s no holiday pay, sick pay, pension or notice period — those come with employment, and this isn’t that
- If you take a booking, we’re relying on you to turn up. That’s the whole business
Most of the panel are sole traders; some work through their own limited company. Either is fine. If you’ve never been self-employed before, that’s fine too — registering takes about ten minutes on gov.uk and we’ll walk you through it.
Before a first booking
What everyone needs in place.
None of this has to be sorted before you apply — tell us honestly where you are on the form and we'll help you through it. But all of it must be in place before you visit a customer.
Everyone
- A Basic DBS certificate, no more than three years old — you apply for it yourself on GOV.UK (about £20) and we see it before your first booking
- Your own public liability insurance, £2,000,000 minimum — you confirm you hold it when you sign your agreement with us
- Right to work in the UK — we check it ourselves, in person or by Home Office share code
- Registered, or willing to register, as self-employed with HMRC
- Agreement to follow our Safeguarding Policy at every visit
Community Drivers, additionally
- Full clean UK driving licence
- Chorley Council private hire driver and vehicle licences, and an enhanced DBS check including the adults' barred list, in place of the basic one — we see all of these before your first lift
- Hire & Reward motor insurance — ordinary business-use cover does not include paid passenger journeys
- A roadworthy vehicle with a current MOT
Property & Garden, additionally
- Your own tools and equipment for the work you take on
- Own transport
How it works
From this form to your first booking.
- You fill in the formTen minutes. It asks about the work you want, when you can do it, where you'll travel and what you've already got in place.
- We come back within two working daysEither to arrange a chat, to ask a couple of things, or to tell you honestly that it isn't a fit right now.
- A half-hour conversation, in personUsually somewhere local and easy. We'll tell you exactly what the work involves and you can ask us anything.
- Paperwork and checksWe check your right to work and see your Basic DBS certificate. You sign your contractor agreement online, which is where you confirm your insurance and the rest of the list above. Drivers also show us their private hire licences and Hire & Reward cover. We'll chase nothing you haven't been warned about.
- Your first bookingOnce those checks are done and your agreement is signed, you go on the panel and start seeing jobs you can accept or decline.
The form
Tell us about yourself.
About ten minutes. Answer honestly rather than ideally — we'd far rather know now that you can't do Fridays or haven't sorted insurance yet than find out later. Fields marked * are required.
We use this to decide whether to invite you for a chat and, if you join, to match you to the right work. If you're not taken on, we delete it after six months — or after twelve, if you ticked the box above. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time by emailing join@moorstead.co.uk.
Full detail: moorstead.co.uk/privacy