Marie Curie Maintenance Assistant

A maintenance assistant at a charity like Marie Curie looks after the buildings and equipment at a hospice, care site, shop, warehouse or office — doing small repairs, routine checks, decorating, moving furniture and equipment, and supporting the contractors who handle bigger jobs. In a hospice setting the "customers" are patients receiving end-of-life care, their families, and the nurses and healthcare assistants who need the place safe, warm, clean and working. It is a hands-on, practical facilities role rather than a graduate scheme or an office job, and it usually sits under a facilities or estates manager.

Approximate graduate salary

Charity maintenance assistant roles typically start somewhere around GBP 22,000-27,000 full-time, and often a bit higher where a recognised trade qualification, multi-site cover or on-call duties are involved. This is a rough approximation only and varies considerably by employer, region (London and the South East pay more), hours and whether the post is part-time. Charity pay is generally below equivalent private-sector facilities work.

What you'd actually do

Working through a list of reported jobs (often logged by nursing or admin staff on a helpdesk system or a paper log): a dripping tap, a door that won't close properly, a broken blind, a light out, a wobbly bed rail.
Carrying out routine planned checks and recording them — for example weekly water temperature and legionella flushing checks, fire door and fire extinguisher checks, emergency lighting tests, and logging the results so the site can prove compliance.
Basic repairs and finishing work: patching and painting walls, replacing ceiling tiles and light fittings, simple plumbing and carpentry, fixing furniture, minor grounds and external tidying.
Moving and setting up: shifting beds, hoists, furniture and stock, setting up rooms for admissions or events, helping with deliveries, taking waste and recycling to the right place.
Meeting and supervising external contractors — letting in the boiler engineer or lift contractor, showing them the isolation points, checking the work was done and paperwork completed.
Reacting to things that cannot wait — a nurse call system fault, a heating failure on a ward, a leak, a blocked drain — and knowing when to escalate to a manager or specialist contractor.
Working sensitively around patients, families and bereaved relatives: judging when not to start a noisy job, keeping areas tidy and safe, and being discreet in clinical and family areas.

How graduates get in

Direct application to advertised vacancies is by far the most common route. Charity maintenance and facilities posts are advertised on the charity's own careers pages, NHS Jobs-style job boards, general job sites and local listings. There is no graduate scheme for this kind of role.
Coming from a trade background is the standard route: an apprenticeship or college qualification in plumbing, electrical installation, carpentry, painting and decorating, or building maintenance, plus some hands-on experience.
Moving across from facilities or maintenance work in another sector — hotels, schools, retail parks, housing associations, NHS estates teams, leisure centres. Employers usually care more about this than about the sector you came from.
Care or hospitality experience plus practical ability. Some hospices and care providers will take someone with limited formal trade training if they are genuinely handy, reliable and good with vulnerable people, and will train them up on the compliance side.
Volunteering with the charity (shops, fundraising, site help) can help you hear about vacancies and understand the organisation, but it is not a formal pipeline into maintenance posts.
For graduates specifically: this is an unusual destination for a degree-holder, and it is more often taken as a stepping stone into facilities or estates management than as a long-term plan. Graduates aiming at facilities management more often enter via a facilities/estates graduate or trainee post, or an assistant facilities coordinator role, rather than a maintenance assistant job.

What employers ask for

A degree is not normally required or asked for. Where a degree is relevant it tends to be in building services, construction, estates or facilities management — but a degree in any subject neither qualifies nor disqualifies you.
Practical maintenance ability is the core requirement. Many adverts ask for a recognised trade qualification (NVQ or City & Guilds level 2/3 in a building trade) or equivalent demonstrable experience; some ask only for proven hands-on competence. This varies a lot between employers.
A full UK driving licence is very commonly required, especially where the role covers more than one site (a hospice plus local shops, or a regional patch).
An enhanced DBS check is normally required because you will be working in and around premises with vulnerable patients. (DBS = Disclosure and Barring Service, the criminal records check used in the UK.)
Health and safety awareness, and willingness to complete site-specific training: manual handling, working at height, legionella awareness, asbestos awareness, fire safety, infection control. Some employers expect you to hold some of these already; many train you.
Comfort working in an end-of-life care environment. Employers will explore this at interview — it is a genuine requirement, not a soft nicety.

Skills that matter

Multi-trade practical competence

You are expected to handle small plumbing, joinery, decorating and fixture jobs yourself rather than calling a contractor for everything, so breadth matters more than depth in one trade.

Record-keeping and compliance discipline

Water temperature logs, fire door checks and emergency lighting tests only count if they are documented, and inspectors and regulators look at the paperwork.

Emotional steadiness and discretion

You will be repairing a light in a room where a patient is dying or a family is grieving, and you need to work quietly, respectfully and without visible discomfort.

Prioritising competing jobs

A failed nurse call system or a leak over a ward outranks a shelf that needs putting up, and you often have to make that call yourself before your manager is available.

Knowing your limits and escalating

Touching gas, fixed electrical work, lifts or clinical equipment without the right competence is a safety and legal problem, so recognising what to hand to a qualified contractor is a real skill.

Working alongside clinical staff

Nurses will flag faults mid-shift and need clear answers about when a bay or bathroom will be usable again, so plain, prompt communication keeps the ward running.

Where it leads

Maintenance assistant to maintenance technician or handyperson with a wider remit — taking on more of the planned maintenance schedule and more independent working, often with employer-funded training in a specific trade or in legionella, electrical testing or fire safety.
Senior maintenance technician or site maintenance lead, coordinating the work list, ordering materials and being the day-to-day contact for contractors on one site.
Facilities coordinator or facilities/estates officer — a shift from doing the work to organising it: contractor management, service contracts, budgets, compliance records across several sites. This is where a degree and office skills start to count for something.
Facilities manager or estates manager for a hospice, region or group of sites, often supported by IWFM qualifications (the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management, the UK professional body for facilities management) or NEBOSH health and safety qualifications.
Sideways moves are common and often faster than promotion: into NHS estates, housing association property teams, school or university estates, or private-sector facilities management, which can pay more. Timescales vary widely — some people move up within a couple of years, others stay in a hands-on role for a whole career by choice, and small charity sites simply have few rungs to climb.

What people get wrong

“It is a caretaker role that is mostly about odd jobs and lightbulbs.”

A large chunk of it is regulatory compliance in a healthcare setting — legionella flushing, fire safety checks, emergency lighting, safe systems of work — with records that have to stand up to inspection. The odd jobs are the visible part; the logbooks are the part that keeps the site legally operating.

“Working for a hospice charity means a gentler, lower-pressure job than commercial maintenance.”

The clinical setting raises the stakes. A heating failure, a broken bathroom or a faulty nurse call system directly affects patients at the end of their lives, so response expectations are tight and there is often an on-call or out-of-hours element.

“The emotional side does not affect you because you are not clinical staff.”

Maintenance staff in hospices work in patient rooms and family areas and get to know regular patients and relatives. Charities generally offer the same staff support and reflective practice routes to non-clinical staff for exactly this reason, and interviews will test whether you have thought about it.

“It is a natural graduate entry point into facilities management.”

It is a trade-and-experience role, not a graduate one, and it is usually paid as such. Graduates who want to run buildings and estates are generally better served by a facilities, estates or property trainee post, or by pairing a spell in a hands-on role with an IWFM qualification and a deliberate move into coordination work.

Where this varies

The job differs a lot depending on where you sit. On a hospice site you are embedded in a healthcare environment with clinical colleagues, compliance regimes and possible on-call cover. In a charity's retail or warehouse operation the work is more about shop fit-outs, shelving, deliveries, security and travelling between shops in a van. At a head office or regional hub it looks more like standard commercial premises maintenance. Team size matters too: on a large site you may be one of several trades with a dedicated estates manager, while on a small site you may be the only maintenance person, doing everything and calling contractors yourself. Some employers hand hospice maintenance to an outsourced facilities company, in which case you would be employed by that contractor rather than the charity, on different terms. Charity roles in this area are also frequently advertised part-time or as job shares.

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.