Duncan Moore, secretary of Torbay and South Devon Trade Union Council, Devon Socialist Party
Hundreds of Torbay residents joined the latest meeting of the Heart Campaign on 13 April. The Heart Campaign was set up in June 2025, in response to a proposed ‘case for change’ from the NHS Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB). At present, Torbay hospital has the capacity to perform Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention on patients experiencing acute heart attacks.
In the ICB’s original ‘case for change’, PPI would no longer be carried out at Torbay Hospital, but would instead see patients suffering acute heart failure taken by ambulance to the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital, some 30 miles away.
Local NHS campaigners raised the alarm that this move endangered patients’ lives, and furthermore was the thin end of the wedge that would eventually see all acute cardiac services moved out of Torbay. The heart department at the Royal Devon is known to already be overstretched, while cardiac care at Torbay is rated the fourth best in the country for emergency angioplasty outcomes.
Huge amounts of campaigning with regular public meetings and a human cordon around Torbay hospital have been organised, drawing attention from local press and MPs.
In March, the ICB withdrew the case for change, in an apparent victory for local campaigners. However, having moved away from a standalone, rapid relocation of heart attack services from Torbay Hospital to Exeter, the ICB has chosen to repackage this proposal and include it as part of a wider, five-year ‘strategic review’ of health and adult social care services in Torbay.
The five-year plan includes the relocation of several essential services; reduced A&E operating times to 9-5, Monday to Friday (currently 24 hours a day 7 days a week); a reduction in the number of doctors at Torbay hospital along with fewer in nursing and other support staff over time; and patients being forced to travel long distances for emergency and often life-saving treatment.
Torbay is a large acute district general hospital serving 300,000 patients in South Devon year round, and up to half a million during the holiday season. There are fears amongst health service staff and campaigners that the remaining two major acute hospitals would be overwhelmed by the additional work and unable to cope, affecting services and damaging patient outcomes across the county.
Torbay and South Devon Trades Council along with affiliated branches of Unison Health and GMB representing workers at the hospital, are working alongside the Heart Campaign, with plans for a May Day event and a demonstration through the town centre and along the seafront.
On 20 April the hospital trust opened a voluntary redundancy scheme. The trades council is contacting Unison and GMB reps at the hospital to offer our solidarity and will support any action they take in response to this escalation.
But critically, the health union branches at the hospital must discuss and plan how they will combat the threat posed to their jobs and the life-saving services they provide.
