Unison, the public service union, has appealed to hospital executives at the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust (RCHT) to review its contract for “hotel services” with Mitie.

According to Unison, for months now, the outsourcing giant has failed to meet standards in the delivery of cleaning and catering for the Trust. A situation which, as Sarah Woodward from Unison explains, is putting “patients at risk, which is a huge worry and something our members would want to avoid at all costs”.

The contract was signed in 2014 and is valued at £90m. In the past four months, Mitie has been fined up to 67 percent of its profit because of the anomalies in service provision, which include delays in response to emergency bedside calls, as well as for requests for patient meals or drinks.

The Trust issued a statement in which it informed that it would “continue to require these high standards and work with Mitie to ensure their consistent delivery."

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