Last year, NHS funding was a key issue for so many candidates ahead of the general election, particularly for myself and the Liberal Democrats. This issue is deeply personal to me, with my wife having worked for the NHS for longer than she would want me to state here, and our eldest son now working as a registrar in Torbay Hospital. The NHS is also the largest employer in my constituency of Torbay. After the election, we all saw how the previous government’s New Hospitals Programme was sadly built on foundations of sand, without the proper funding to back it. Meanwhile, just as the new government were only then made aware of the true state of the broader funding challenges for the NHS, I only realised the extent of the disrepair of Torbay Hospital after becoming MP last July.
Torbay Hospital exemplifies the challenges faced across the NHS. It has met an almost criminal level of disinvestment which former governments should feel ashamed of. It is the third oldest hospital in the UK, with only 6% of its estate rated as up to standard. There have been almost 700 sewage leaks onsite, often affecting clinical areas, causing closures and service delays. The main tower block in the hospital is swathed in scaffolding, but not for repairs or a rebuild, but to stop parts of the building falling and hitting patients or staff. However, the new hospital application for Torbay has been kicked into the long grass, and building may not start for another ten years. Torbay have since bid for £183 million in Wave Two Mitigation Funding to start on the rebuild with replacing the dangerous tower block, yet so far only £7 million has been awarded, which hardly touches the sides.
As well as broad challenges for hospitals across the South West, integrated care boards (ICBs) are facing their own struggles. There is talk of merging Devon and Cornwall ICBs. Both are relatively challenged, so I fear this could be a marriage of two bankrupts. More sensible would be to consider a broader footprint, incorporating Somerset and perhaps Dorset. This could mirror the coverage of a mayoral authority in the South West, which ought to be larger to avoid making us the poorer country cousins.
Devon NHS services face the real challenge of making cuts to services across the county. The ICB itself needs to save £56 million, while Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital needs to save £69 million. This adds up to a quarter of a Billion Pounds across the county. Torbay needs to save £42 million, which threatens its Integrated Care Organisation (ICO), the merger of NHS acute and social care services. The ICO currently saves equivalent to 60 hospital beds by facilitating timely release of patients, yet with these cuts, its long-term future is being called into question.
A local issue which truly highlights the funding crisis in the NHS is our coronary care services in Torbay. For ostensibly cost-cutting reasons, for months we were threatened with the vital pPCI (Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention) service being moved from Torbay to Exeter. This intervention is used when someone has a heart attack, and involves a stent being inserted to open up a blocked artery. As an urgent emergency procedure, it must be performed as quickly as possible – yet under these proposals, patients would be sent not to their nearest hospital of Torbay, but to Exeter, at least 24 miles away. As my medic son stated, “time is tissue”, and a consultant cardiologist at Torbay warned that if they pressed on with this approach, it could result in greater debilitation and deaths.
Thanks to campaigning, this service relocation has been pushed back twice, and I wholeheartedly thank our local medics for standing up for their patients, and to the thousands of people who signed our petition on the issue. As well as funding challenges, the proposals were prompted by Getting It Right First Time – this was clearly an instance when they did not get it right. I have heard from many professional sources how this is a metropolitan approach which often fails in areas with significant rurality, such as Devon, by failing to acknowledge local issues from deprivation to travel needs.
We need immediate capital investment in hospital infrastructure across the South West, particularly in Torbay. We also need a funding model that reflects rural challenges and demographics, not just urban averages. We further need to protect the integrated care initiatives and our life-saving emergency services. The longer the Government delays, the higher the cost will be – not just in pounds, but in lives.
We need immediate capital investment in hospital infrastructure across the South West, particularly in Torbay
