Mitie has joined fellow giant service providers Serco and G4S in publicly welcoming the government’s plans to introduce a new living wage, which will force all UK-based employers to pay over-25s at least £7.20 an hour from next April onward.

The company’s CEO Ruby McGregor-Smith has said that Mitie will look to offset the additional costs by winning more contracts and increasing the scale of its operations. She added that, due to the wage hike being “regulatory”, all companies will almost certainly comply with the changes at board level.

Mitie has recently won two new public sector contracts – one with Kensington & Chelsea council and one with Hammersmith & Fulham – that will earn the firm roughly £25 million between now and 2020.

The news came shortly after CBI director-general John Cridland openly accused the government of burdening service providers with the cost of wage increases, making the prospect of public sector work less appealing as a result.

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