The first company to bear the name of Deborah was formed in 1967 by Joe Whitlam whose daughter the company was named after.

The original Deborah company started life as a contract scaffolding business based in Wakefield. It very quickly expanded forming subsidiary companies in Barnetby, Liverpool, Teesside and London. In addition to the expansion of its scaffolding activities the company diversified into industrial insulation with the formation of Deborah Insulation Limited and Deborah Insulation (North East ) Limited.

The company was floated on the stock exchange in 1976 under the name of Deborah Services Plc continuing to establish itself as one of the market leaders in the power generation, offshore and petro-chemical industries providing scaffolding and insulation services on new construction and repair and maintenance projects. 

The business was acquired by BET Plc in 1987. Over the next five years BET consolidated their extensive scaffolding interests to form one of the UK’s largest companies of its type under the name of Deborah Grayston Scaffolding Limited. Deborah’s insulation and painting business was merged into the HAT organisation, another BET company. Deborah Grayston and HAT were subsequently merged to form Deborah Services Limited in 1994 for the purpose of offering clients multi-discipline services.

Following the acquisition of BET by Rentokil in 1996 Deborah was re-named Initial Deborah Services reverting back to Deborah Services in 2000 following an MBO by three of its existing directors.