2010s
Mitie made its first acquisition in the health and social care sector in October 2012, when it spent £111 million on the homecare firm Enara.[14] In April 2013, Mitie's chief executive, Ruby McGregor-Smith, was made non-executive director to the board of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.[15] During February 2014, Mitie introduced its new visual identity.[16]
Between 2013 and 2015, cleaning staff employed by Mitie at various high-profile locations, including the Royal Opera House, the Houses of Parliament, the law firm Clifford Chance, First Great Western train services, and various NHS hospitals, held demonstrations against low pay.[17][18][19]
In February 2014, Mitie announced an eight-year contract with the Home Office, making it the largest provider of immigration removal centres in the United Kingdom.[20] Almost two years later, Mitie came under fire for its management of the immigration centres after the prison inspectorate stated that the facilities were "dirty", "rundown" and "insanitary".[21][22] Mitie has continued to be involved in the sector.[23][24][25]
The firm secured a cleaning contract with Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust during June 2014 valued at £90m over seven years. Sick pay cost £1.2m in its first eight months, compared with £280,000 for the NHS in the previous financial year; UNISON blamed the rise on staff stress, which it claimed had been caused by mistakes on pay.[26] Such difficulties were not typical to Mitie's other NHS cleaning contracts,[27] although there has been some criticism over their higher cost than other providers.[28]
In November 2014, Mitie acknowledged that its homecare business was less profitable than had been anticipated and that it was struggling to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of care workers.[29] During July 2015, East Sussex County Council reportedly ended a £2 million contract with Mitie to provide home care over allegedly poor standards of care provided.[30][31]
During 2016, shares in Mitie fell to a four-year low after the company warned that an expected boom in outsourced services was not happening. Throughout both 2015 and 2016, it was reported that Mitie was one of the most shorted stocks in the FTSE 250.[32][33] McGregor-Smith announced in November 2016 that the company was withdrawing from the healthcare business (providing home care for the elderly) in response to spending cuts and rising employment costs that had made the sector unviable.[34][35]
In November 2017, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) announced an investigation into the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2016. This led to the disclosure in the Annual Report for 2017 that there had been errors in the impairment testing of healthcare goodwill and that, if certain judgements had instead been treated as errors, the amount of the prior year adjustment disclosed in the 2016 results would have increased by £44.0 million. This disclosure had addressed the FRC's concerns.[36][37]
During December 2017, following a string of three profit warnings in the space of four months,[38][39] McGregor-Smith stepped down from her role with the outsourcing group; she was replaced by former managing director of British Gas and current Chief Executive Phil Bentley.[40]
