Press Release

7 February 2025

A warm welcome for HRH The Princess Royal at Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre

  • HRH The Princess Royal this week visited the Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre in her role as Patron of The Butler Trust
  • The Butler Trust is a charity that recognises the work of frontline custodial colleagues and HRH has personally presented its awards since 1985
  • During her visit, HRH met with 2024 and 2018 Butler Trust Award winners Irfa Chaudhri and Jackie Smart, as well as many other frontline colleagues from across the Centre

Yesterday, HRH The Princess Royal visited Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in her role as Patron of The Butler Trust to visit Mitie’s frontline colleagues in Care & Custody and celebrate winners of the Butler Awards.

The visit recognised the work of Irfa Chaudhri, who works as a Tutor at the IRC. Irfa first met HRH The Princess Royal at St James’ Palace in March 2024 at the annual Butler Trust Awards, which seek to recognise the extraordinary work of frontline colleagues working in custodial and community justice settings. Irfa was recognised for her warmth, compassion, and engaging teaching style, opening new opportunities for future employment to her students, and improving their mental health and wellbeing at the same time. Since 2014 Irfa has developed her classes from a small art room to now running a range of accredited courses in a designated hospitality room. These include cake decorating, sugar craft, floristry and her latest venture, balloon craft. Her classroom has been described as ‘the best place in the centre’.

HRH visited Heathrow IRC to visit Irfa and some of her exceptional colleagues, including Jackie Smart, Head of Learning Skills, Regimes, and Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, who was recognised with a Butler Trust Award in 2018 for the support she has given to residents and officers across the centre. Jackie has introduced workshops to support disabled residents at the centre as well as worked with the healthcare team to provide extra support for residents.

HRH spent around an hour at the centre, touring the site and hearing about the diverse experiences and achievements of colleagues working across a range of roles in the Centre – from Learning and Development, to Engagement, Custody Detention, and Welfare.

To mark the occasion, HRH The Princess Royal unveiled a commemorative plaque which will reside in the Regimes area, where Irfa works, for years to come.

Sarah Mallender, Centre Director, Heathrow IRC, Mitie, said:

“It was an honour to welcome HRH The Princess Royal to the Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre to celebrate the brilliant work of our Butler Trust winners, Irfa and Jackie, as well as more of our exceptional colleagues. We are staunch supporters of The Butler Trust and are enormously grateful for the brilliant work they do in recognising the important role colleagues do in supporting those in our care.”


Notes to editors

Notes to editors 

The Butler Trust is a charity that seeks to recognise the extraordinary work of frontline colleagues working in custodial and community justice settings. HRH The Princess Royal has been the Trust’s Patron since it was established in 1985 and has personally presented its annual awards since. This year, the Trust will be celebrating its 40th anniversary of the awards.

About Mitie

Founded in 1987, Mitie employs 72,000 colleagues and is the leading technology-led Facilities Transformation company in the UK. We are a trusted partner to around 3,000 blue chip customers across the public and private sectors, working with them to transform their built estates, and the lived experience for their colleagues and customers, as well as providing data-driven insights to inform better decision-making.

In each of our core services of engineering (hard services) and security and hygiene (soft services) we hold market leadership positions. We also deliver projects capabilities in the areas of power and grid connections, building fit outs & modernisation, decarbonisation, fire & security, and telecoms infrastructure. Our sector expertise includes central government, critical national infrastructure, defence, financial services, healthcare & life sciences, local government & education, retail & logistics and transport & aviation.

We hold industry-leading ESG credentials, including a place on the CDP Climate change A List, and we have received multiple industry awards recently including B2B Marketing Team of the Year, Best Low Carbon Solution and Net Zero Carbon Strategy of the year. Targeting Net Zero by the end of 2025, our ambitious emissions reduction plans have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). We have been recognised as a UK Top Employer for the seventh consecutive year and Most Admired Company in the Support Services sector. Find out more at www.mitie.com.