Mitie pays £10 million to offload homecare arm

The scale of the crisis in Britain’s adult social care was today demonstrated by outsourcer Mitie having to pay nearly £10 million to entice a buyer to take over its homecare business.

FTSE 250-listed Mitie received a nominal £2 from specialist investor Apposite Capital for MiHomecare, which it bought when branded as Enara for £111 million just five years ago, and Complete Care, which sends nurses into people’s homes.

Two pounds is what one of Mitie’s minimum-wage-paid carers is paid for 15 minutes’ work.

But Mitie is paying Apposite £9.45 million to find “trading losses and the cost of the turnaround plan” to take the £11 million-in-losses-a-year businesses off its hands.

The businesses, which makes 80,000 visits to elderly and disabled people each week, also provide meals-on-wheels .

Mitie also topped up the £115.3 million impairment made on its healthcare business in September by another £36.8 million.

The shares rose 6% to 219.1p. Mitie’s former chief executive Ruby McGregor-Smith previously said MiHomecare’s experience revealed that “between the NHS and local authorities, the cuts have gone too deep”.