As members of the Durham University community, we object to our university’s continued relationship with Mitie. 

Durham University (DU) currently contracts with Mitie for security services. Mitie staff are paid the minimum wage and employed precariously, with zero hour contracts being used for some staff. Mitie has a reputation not only for racism and poor treatment of staff, but for running immigration detention centres in which people are subject to inadequate  and unhygienic conditions. Students and staff have long raised these concerns about Mitie’s labour and contracting record.

We object to DU’s use of agency workers and question how DU’s relationship with Mitie adheres to the University’s commitments to workplace equality, to inclusion, to decolonising our curricula and to internationalisation. 

Durham University is pursuing an ‘internationalisation’ agenda, and has provided support to EU staff in the post-Brexit period. Furthermore DU has unequivocally condemned acts of racism in our community and has recently taken additional steps to do more to foster an inclusive culture. However, university staff and students are also subject to the hostile environment and only three years ago, two academic members of staff were at risk of deportation.

We question, therefore, how the University can support Mitie, a company that is contracted to detain asylum-seeking women in a detention centre scheduled to open this autumn in Consett, County Durham at the Medomsley detention centre site, a site of historic abuse. Having a detention centre on our doorstep undermines the university’s efforts to create a welcoming, safe and inclusive environment for staff and students and to have a positive impact on the wider community.  The Home Office intends to use this detention centre to deter and reduce immigration and asylum-seeking as part of its current moves towards a harsher immigration system which puts many lives at risk. 

In addition to conflicting with DU’s core principles, we firmly believe that DU should have no contractual relationships with Mitie given the latter’s track record on:

• Documented racism against employees: In June, 2021, an employment tribunal expressed deep concerns that Mitie employees engaged in consistent patterns of racist comments and name-calling against Black Mitie employees. 
• Subjecting people to dangerous, unhygienic living conditions: In 2013 there was a fire at the Campsfield House immigration detention centre (Oxfordshire), following inspections noting the lack of sprinklers and reports found unhygienic conditions at Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow.
• Labour practices: Unite has lodged a complaint against Mitie for blacklisting employees who refuse to reveal union membership.

Alongside this, Mitie profits from the Home Office’s strict immigration policies through contracts for detention, operations and transportation (deportation). The company is therefore widely associated with the Home Office’s hostile environment policy, whose deterrence mechanisms run counter to DU’s principles as an inclusive workplace, an institution of higher learning, an alumni community and an international leader in research.

As members of the Durham community, we call on the senior leadership team to end its contract with Mitie and employ all workers directly and to cut ties with companies facilitating the detention of migrants and asylum-seekers. We also call on university leaders to declare their opposition to the detention centre and call on DU to welcome and support more students who have sought and/or received asylum to our community, and to cover the full costs of migration for staff and Postgraduate Researchers.