Mitie cleans up with £4.4m contract for historic Scottish buildings

Mitie will provide cleaning services to more than 50 Historic Environment Scotland sites, including Edinburgh Castle. Picture: Ed Robinson

The outsourcing giant has extended its relationship with public body Historic Environment Scotland (HES), securing a five-year cleaning contract worth £4.4 million.

The agreement covers specialist cleaning services for more than 50 historic buildings and ancient monuments in the HES portfolio, such as Stirling Castle, Melrose Abbey and Edinburgh Castle – Scotland’s most visited paid-for tourist attraction. It includes both the external and internal cleaning of buildings, offices and windows.

This marks the extension of a nine-year partnership between the two organisations, with Mitie having held a long-term contract with HES since 2010.

Mitie also announced that it is set to introduce Edinburgh Castle’s first electric vehicle, in an effort to reduce its environmental impact and support the capital’s commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030.

The group has previously pledged to switch its entire vehicle fleet to electric by the same year.

Matthew Thompson, managing director of cleaning and environmental services at Mitie, said: “It’s a privilege to look after some of Scotland’s best loved historic buildings and monuments through our strong partnership with HES.

“With a renewed focus on sustainability, we’re excited to introduce the first electric vehicle at Edinburgh to support the capital’s carbon emission pledge and we will continue to deliver improvements to keep Scotland’s beautiful heritage sites shining.”

The announcement comes one month after Mitie, whose contracts in Scotland include maintaining the Scottish Parliament building, hinted at further job cuts as its turnaround continues “at pace”.

Chief executive Phil Bentley said there would “inevitably” be some impact on jobs as he set out the details of the next stage of his overhaul, dubbed Project Forte.

The second leg of the revamp is to focus on Mitie’s engineering services business, which currently has around 8,400 staff. It follows the group’s Project Helix cost programme, launched in 2017, which it estimates will bring savings of £50m per annum by spring 2020.

Mitie, which employs 52,500 people across the UK, posted a 6 per cent rise in underlying earnings to £88.2m in the financial year to 31 March. Revenues rose by 9.4 per cent to £2.2 billion.