Admissions & Retail Assistant (0.4FTE)
| Job Title | Admissions & Retail Assistant (0.4FTE) |
| Position | Permanent |
| Hours | 728 hours per annum, typically 2-3 days/shifts perweek although this may change across the year dueto the seasonality of our opening. Some eveningsand regular weekend required as part of a roster. |
| Salary | £10,760pa |
| Holidays | 13.5 days including pro rata bank holidays |
| Manager | Assistant Visitor Experience Manager |
| Location | Chelsea Physic Garden, 66 Royal Hospital Road,London SW3 4HS |
1. Equal Opportunities
Chelsea Physic Garden is a place for everyone. As an equal opportunities’ employer, Chelsea Physic Garden is committed to championing equality, diversity, and inclusion in our workplace. If you are a suitably qualified applicant, we encourage your application whatever your age, disability, gender, gender identity, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation or socioeconomic background.
2. About Chelsea Physic Garden
Chelsea Physic Garden (CPG) is an independent charity set up in 1983 to promote and preserve the four-acre garden of the same name. The charity’s mission is to demonstrate the medicinal, economic, cultural and environmental importance of plants to the survival and wellbeing of humankind. We are open to visitors six-days a week, eleven months of the year. There has been a teaching Garden on our site since 1673, and today we hope that all our visitors leave inspired, having learnt something new.
3. Our Values
We have a set of five inter linked reinforcing values that support each other
4. About the Role
We are committed to making Chelsea Physic Garden a welcoming and inclusive garden for all. As the first point of contact for our visitors, the Visitor Experience team plays a vital role in shaping every visitor experience and ensuring each visit is memorable, engaging and inspiring.
The Admissions & Retail Assistant (ARA) is a customer-facing role at the heart of the Garden’s daily operations. You will provide a warm, professional welcome to all visitors while supporting the smooth running of the Visitor Welcome Area and Garden Shop.
Delivering consistently high standards of customer care, you will create positive first impressions and meaningful interactions that reflect the Garden’s values. You will actively support the Visitor Experience Manager & Assistant in achieving annual targets, including visitor admissions, membership conversions, Direct Debit sign-ups, and Gift Aid contributions noted below. These targets will be set with you on induction and reviewed annually:
| Sales Target – associated with the role (updated annually) | |
| Voluntary Ticket Donations | 30% of all tickets |
| Gift Aid conversion | 10% of all ickets |
| Membership sales target | 3% of all tickets |
| Direct Debit sign-up target | 30% on 3% target |
| Retail sales target | 5% (specific items) or maintaining £3-4Spend Per Head with specific targets onseasonal items |
Alongside front-of-house responsibilities, you will contribute to the daily retail operation by maintaining excellent shop presentation standards, assisting visitors with product enquiries, promoting sales opportunities, and processing transactions accurately and efficiently.
This role is ideal for someone who is enthusiastic, proactive and passionate about delivering outstanding visitor experiences in a unique and historic setting.
The Garden is open to visitors daily including Bank Holidays, except Wednesdays. We are closed for approximately five weeks each year. These closure periods are incorporated into your annualised contract, and you will receive a consistent monthly salary throughout the year, including during these closure weeks.
5. Key areas of responsibility
5.1 Visitor Experience & Customer Service
The ARAs are responsible for delivering a consistently high-quality visitor experience to everyone who visits Chelsea Physic Garden. They act as knowledgeable and approachable ambassadors for the Garden, ensuring all visitors receive accurate information, helpful guidance and a warm welcome.
ARAs will respond to visitor enquiries confidently and professionally, resolving queries wherever possible and referring more complex enquiries to the appropriate colleagues when required. They are expected to maintain up-to-date knowledge of the Garden, including seasonal highlights as they change throughout the year, as well as the wider public offer, including the Public Programme of events.
The Garden operates a Friends Membership Scheme, and we pride ourselves on maintaining positive, personable and professional relationships with our Friends. They are valued and important supporters of the Garden, and the ARA team plays a key role as a primary liaison point for them.
The role also involves regular liaison with visitor-facing volunteers, such as Tour Guides and Stewards. ARAs communicate key operational updates, including last minute changes and coordinate our schedules to ensure visitors are accurately informed about timings and availability.
ARAs support the Visitor Experience Manager and Assistant Visitor Experience Manager in delivering day-to-day visitor experience objectives and continuously improving our front-of-house offer. They are expected to take an active interest in the Garden’s Audience Development Strategy, contributing to our commitment to being a welcoming, inclusive and accessible site for all audiences.
Where possible, the ARAs will deliver small scale projects on an ad hoc basis in line with personal development plan e.g. ‘How To Guides’ on processes for new staff members.
All ARA’s must maintain a strong understanding of operational procedures, including health and safety, safeguarding and lost child protocols, to ensure that everyone at CPG has as safe a visit as possible. The team plays a key role in supporting the
operational management team during incidents, including fire and emergency evacuations. Training will be provided.
5.2 Retail
The ARA team is responsible for delivering exceptional customer service within the Garden Shop, ensuring every visitor receives knowledgeable, friendly and attentive support. They will develop a strong understanding of the products on sale and their relevance to the Garden, enabling them to confidently engage visitors and support the achievement of monthly sales targets. At times they will have specific sales goals. ARAs must proactively maintain high retail standards, unpack stock and ensure shop displays are fully stocked, visually appealing and presented in accordance with the Presentation Guidelines set by the Retail Buyer & Merchandiser. They will take pride in the appearance and organisation of the retail space, contributing to a positive and engaging shopping experience.
5.3 Delivering Targets: Gift Aid, Donations, Membership and Sales
The ARA team plays an important role in achieving monthly targets across Gift Aid, ticket donations, membership conversion and retail sales. ARAs are expected to proactively identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell in a natural and engaging way, enhancing the visitor experience, demonstrating the charitable impact and supporting the Garden’s income generation goals.
This includes confidently promoting Membership, explaining its benefits, and encouraging eligible visitors to convert their admission tickets where appropriate.
5.4 Opening & Closing Responsibilities
The ARA team is responsible for the daily opening and closing of the Visitor Welcome Area & Garden shop, ensuring these spaces are prepared to a high standard at the start of the day and appropriately at closing. This may include sweeping, litter picking, cleaning signs, dusting and removal of clutter.
Throughout the day, ARAs must maintain excellent presentation standards across all front-of-house areas. This includes re-merchandising the shop as required, ensuring displays remain tidy and well stocked, and keeping family trails, membership leaflets and other visitor materials fully replenished. ARAs work closely with the Duty Manager and promptly inform them of any Health & Safety, Security, Fire or Safeguarding concerns.
At the end of each day, the ARA team is responsible for clearing the Garden of visitors in a professional and courteous manner, ensuring that all visitors have exited the site safely before closure.
5.5 Administration & Cash Handling
The ARA team must maintain a good understanding of how to use our online ticketing systems, and Shopify POS for retail and onsite ticket purchases. They are expected to maintain up to date knowledge in Gift Aid guidance to communicate this to visitors
confidently in order to help maximise conversion. They ensure daily cash floats are prepared and accounted for each day. At the end of each day, they must accurately account for all admission tickets sold, retail transactions, cash received and PDQ (card) payments. Daily reconciliation of takings against the till end-of-day report is required, with any discrepancies clearly identified, recorded and reported in line with internal procedures.
6. Person Specification
| Knowledge, Skills and Experience | Essential/Desirable |
| Customer Service and Retail experience | E |
| Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (written andoral) | E |
| Strong organisational skills | E |
| Self-motivated and able to act on initiative | E |
| Knowledge of current trends, resources and information relatingto the visitor sector | D |
| Ability to work as part of a small team | E |
| Excellent communications skills (written and verbal) | E |
| Knowledge of MS Office programmes and ability to learn to workwith different systems such as Shopify | E |
| Experience using till/POS systems and cash handling | D |
| Knowledge of working in value-led organisations such ascharities, or the cultural sector | E |
| Understanding of Gift Aid and confidence in communicating thisto visitors | E |
| First aid qualification | D |
| Knowledge of Safeguarding | D |
| Knowledge of GDPR | D |
| An interest in Gardens | D |
| An interest in working sustainably in a time of climateemergency | E |
7. Competency Framework
We have a set of eight competencies that are common to all employees and within the framework each competency has four levels which relate to the level at which individual roles need to operate. The competency assessment for this role is set out below and more information will be provided to support this assessment.
| Competency | Descriptor | Level for thisrole | |
| 1 | Leadership | Setting the pace and behaving with integrity | 1 |
| 2 | PeopleManagement | Making clear what you expect and what is to beachieved; enabling and supporting your staff todeliver | 1 |
| 3 | Analysis anduse of Evidence | Collecting, analysing and using informationand evidence, assessing risk and takingdecisions | 1 |
| 4 | Communication | Communicating with colleagues, visitors andstakeholders | 1 |
| 5 | CollaborativeWorking | Working together with people within andoutside of CPG to help us achieve our goals | 1 |
| 6 | DeliveringResults | Organising and managing the work to deliverresults | 1 |
| 7 | Using andManagingResources | Using resources cost effectively | 1 |
| 8 | Know How | The knowledge, skills and expertise you needto do your job and help others to do theirs | 1 |
8. Terms and Conditions
This is a permanent part-time post. The post holder will be required to work between 2 to 3 days/shifts per week but the nature of the role means that flexibility over the days and hours worked is required to meet the needs of the business. There is a requirement to work regular weekends and Bank Holidays as part of a roster. Please note from 2027 we will be open Monday – Sunday (closed Wednesday).
Due to the seasonal nature of the Garden operating, hours are longer in our Summer Season March – October, and shorter during our Winter Season.
The Garden operates a salary exchange pension scheme with Royal London. The equivalent contribution rates are 6% employer and 3% employee at the end of the probationary period.
Holiday entitlement is pro-rated for part-time staff in line with our policy for all employees. Full-time staff (1.0 FTE) receive 25 days of annual leave per year plus 8 Bank Holidays. On a 0.4 FTE contract, this equates to approximately 13.5 days per year, inclusive of statutory holiday entitlement.
The Garden is currently closed for around 5 weeks over the winter, during which the ARA team is paid but not required to work. Annualised hours are spread across the periods when the Garden is open to the public, with some hours allocated for training or non-public activities. In line with staff policy, you would be asked to take only 3 days of your annual leave during this closure.
The role is based at Chelsea Physic Garden, 66 Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HS.
Returning your application:
Please complete the job application form and equal opportunities form and email them to jobs@chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk
Dates:
Closing date for applications: Midnight 12 July 2026
Interview: 23 July 2026
Please note we are currently recruiting for multiple Admission & Retail Assistants.