Anger over Torbay Hospital redundancy offer

MPs call on the Health Secretary

South Devon’s MPs have called on the Health Secretary to act after the ‘distressing’ news that Torbay Hospital is offering staff redundancy packages. 

The move has also led to the resignation of two high-profile local health campaigners from the hospital’s board of governors.

Susie Colley and Sally Allen-Gerard of the Torbay Heart Campaign said they no longer had confidence in local health bodies.

The three Liberal Democrat MPs say the cost-cutting voluntary redundancy scheme launched this week by the Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust is ‘incredibly concerning’.

The trust says it faces serious financial pressures and is taking significant steps to deliver savings. It said the majority of its funding was spent on staffing and it needed to reduce costs further.

The controversy comes against a backdrop of recent conflict over local healthcare provision. The Heart Campaign was set up amid fears that emergency cardiac care services could be moved from Torbay to Exeter as part of a gradual ‘down-grading’ of the bay’s medical facilities.

Hundreds of local people attended a recent protest meeting and a ‘fighting fund’ has been launched to bankroll a legal challenge.

The trust has shelved its controversial early proposals on cardiac care, but retains a ‘five-year plan’ which objectors fear will lead to the service being downgraded.

A long-standing partnership with Torbay Council to deliver adult social care is also being broken up, which has led to calls for Health Secretary Wes Streeting to step in.

A letter signed by MPs Steve Darling (Torbay), Caroline Voaden (South Devon) and Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) said that while people had voted at the last election for investment in the NHS, Torbay and the rest of Devon were seeing cuts instead.

Cuts running to tens of billions of pounds were being imposed across the county, it said, with limited democratic accountability.

“Torbay Hospital clearly needs greater financial assistance,” said the letter. “Staff are consistently appreciated by patients as being absolutely outstanding, and this new pressure on them to leave their posts will be of great detriment to patient experience.

“This is especially distressing since the population served by Torbay Hospital is older and more vulnerable than the national average, and these challenges will only increase with time.”

In their statement Mrs Colley and Mrs Allen-Gerard said they had decided not to take up their governor roles ‘with deep regret, but absolute conviction’.

“We accepted this position in good faith, with a clear commitment to serve our community,” they added. “However, the recent announcement regarding a voluntary redundancy scheme fundamentally changes the landscape.

“It raises serious concerns about the long-term future of our local hospital services. We cannot align ourselves with decisions that appear to signal a continued downgrading of our hospital.”

The trust told the BBC the decision to introduce a time-limited voluntary redundancy scheme had not been taken lightly.

“All applications will be carefully assessed to ensure patient safety and service delivery are not compromised,” it said. “There is no obligation for anyone to apply, and support is available to all staff.”