Mitie spends £111m buying Enara to move into patient care

Mitie spent almost £111 million on home care firm Enara yesterday, marking its first move into Britain’s expanding outsourced health and social care sector.

The firm said it aimed to benefit from the UK’s ageing population and cost pressures forcing a shift from hospitals and residential care homes towards greater care in the community.

The provision of this care was increasingly being outsourced by councils and health authorities to private firms, it noted.

Chief executive Ruby McGregor-Smith said: “We’ve come to the conclusion over the last two years that we needed to do something which gave us the platform for more growth and the home care market is a very good place to start.

“We have a very rapidly ageing UK population and the care market is highly fragmented. We think the opportunities will get much bigger in the next few years, for example looking after community care as a whole for a local authority.”

Mitie delivers a range of cleaning, security and energy services and employs some 8,000 full- and part-time staff in Scotland out of a UK-wide workforce of about 65,000.

Enara – the UK’s fourth largest provider of home care services based mainly in southern England – is expected to have revenue of £93m for the year to 31 March 2013. The group made a small loss before tax in its last financial year.

About 14 per cent of its work comes from private paying patients, with the rest from local authorities and the NHS. Mitie bought the firm from August Equity LLP and Enara’s senior management team.

Investec analyst Andrew Gibb described Mitie’s move as very sensible and an important first step in building a broader healthcare business.