Ten More Years: Torbay's NHS Is Running Out of Time

Try getting a GP appointment. Try finding an NHS dentist. Try sitting in A&E while the hours pass, or waiting for an ambulance that takes longer every year. For millions of us, this isn't an occasional frustration any more. It's normal life.

The part that should alarm us most is that GPs delivered more appointments last year than ever before. That's a record, and the queues are still growing. If doctors are working harder than ever and we're still waiting longer, the system isn't just stretched. It's failing to keep up.

In Torbay, I don't just read about this. I live it.

I've worked in Adult Social Care within the NHS since 2020. Our hospital is one of the oldest NHS estates in the country. It was promised a rebuild under the New Hospital Programme, and that promise has now been pushed back by up to ten years. A baby born at Torbay Hospital this week could be ten years old before a single new ward opens. Until then, patients and staff are left making do with a building that was already marked for replacement.

Yes, there has been good news. In June, a £14.2 million upgrade to A&E was completed, and it's welcome. But a new front door doesn't fix a crumbling house.

The crisis nobody is talking about.

My job is to keep people out of hospital by getting Torbay residents the care and support they need before a crisis puts them in a hospital bed. Right now we have something rare: an integrated Health and Social Care team. One phone call, and the system works together around you.

On 1 April 2027, that ends. Social care goes back to Torbay Council, less than six months from now.

Social care is expensive, underfunded and badly in need of reform: how it's paid for, how it's provided and how it's run. The question nobody has yet answered is whether the care Torbay relies on today will survive the handover. If we get this wrong, the cost won't show up on a council spreadsheet. It will show up in A&E corridors.

And the dentists?

For many of us, finding an NHS dentist in Torbay has become close to impossible. The contracts are broken. Until they're rewritten, people will keep pulling their own teeth or going without care.

Torbay was promised a new hospital, joined-up care and a dentist down the road. Right now, we're at risk of losing all three.