Inside the battle to keep Torbay Hospital from crumbling

Sitting on a bench in the courtyard of Torbay Hospital, a nurse finds the space to take a moment of respite. Rewind almost 100 years, it’s easy to imagine Ella Rowcroft, the philanthropist behind the building of the hospital, sitting in the same spot and looking upon the new building with pride.

Much has changed in the Bay since Ella Rowcroft laid the foundation stone in June of 1925, and the hospital has often struggled to keep up. Now, it’s a case of limping this sprawling complex over the finish line as plans grind on to build a brand new £400m hospital in its place.

Under the government’s New Hospital Programme, Torbay should see a revolution in its healthcare facilities in the long run. Until these plans are finalised, however, Torbay Hospital says that it is “chasing its tail” to keep up with mounting maintenance problems.

As the third oldest hospital in the country, issues such as sewage leaks, water ingress and crumbling concrete have blighted the site. It’s been found that 80 per cent of the hospital estate is currently of poor or bad quality.

Standing in the courtyard of Ella Rowcroft’s original legacy, it’s incredible to see how much has and hasn’t changed. While the iconic original building is still a critically important space for the hospital to function, it is beginning to show signs of severe deterioration.

Currently, the building is used for daily cancer treatment, children’s wards and some surgical wards. However, it’s clear from the facade that many parts of the brickwork need repair. Worse still, after years of patchwork, water ingress has left the roof in a poor state.

“There’s a huge number of challenges when it comes to managing a building like this,” explained Caroline Cozens, the Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust’s Director of Capital Development.

“We’ve been chasing patch repairs on the roof for a long time. So now, we've got to the point where water ingress is going through this roof, and the timber structures underneath are becoming damp. Really, the timbers and the roof felt need redoing as well as a new roof.

“How will we do that? The scaffolding alone is hundreds of thousands of pounds before you even do the roof work, and at the moment, our capital funds don’t allow that.”

A condition survey carried out in 2021 estimated that the backlog maintenance cost for Torbay Hospital was in the region of £141 million.

At present, the local NHS trust that runs Torbay Hospital receives up to £20 million of capital a year to spend on maintenance and upgrades across the whole Torbay and South Devon estate, but Caroline explained that this doesn’t go far enough.

She said: “That has to do our IT maintenance, our medical devices maintenance and our estate maintenance. But it also must pay for anything that has a capital impact, so if we were buying patient transport ambulances, for example, that would be a capital spend, when things are leased, they also must be funded. Then you add inflation and it squeezes our funding even more.”

When the new hospital is built, it has not yet been decided what the original building will be used for.

Caroline added: “It is not fit for the future in terms of clinical use, but we can't do without this. We haven't got any additional capacity at the moment.”

Walking into the rest of the hospital, you’re met with a warren of tight corridors and busy wards. Over the years, different developments have sprung up around the original hospital and it’s often hard to discern which part of the complex you’re in.

Much of this part of the hospital was built in the 1960s when construction work began on a £2.5 million expansion, which included new wards, an outpatient department, an accident and emergency department, a pharmacy and other clinical offices. It also included a nurse training school and residential blocks for junior medical and nursing staff.

After 50 years, some of these developments are now also deteriorating, the worst of which is the tower block at the heart of the hospital.

Originally, the tower block was designed to have open wards, but over the years, the Trust has had to retrofit the building to accommodate for increasing demand. Now, the original open plan layout has been subdivided into four to six bed wards as well as individual rooms for infection control.

This increased capacity has put a strain on the building’s power and infrastructure. Additional bathrooms have put huge pressure on the tower block’s ageing plumbing system and the building is now experiencing regular sewage back-ups. In January, there was a serious incident in which floors four, five and six of the building were all affected. All toilet facilities had to be closed as sewage was found to be leaking into the wards themselves.

While maintenance and making sure the toilets are used correctly can help, Caroline says a large part of the issue is with the building itself.

“This isn’t about replacing the plumbing system, it’s about the volume of people using our buildings and the amount of water that we put through them. Unfortunately, we’re seeing sewage regularly exceeding capacity and it's coming back up.”

The deterioration of the building is also apparent from the outside.

Torbay’s slightly saline atmosphere has slowly eaten away at the concrete and metal that the tower block is constructed from. Now, pieces of the building are crumbling away, exposing the metal rods underneath.

Abseil surveys and lab tests were taken out last July after chunks of concrete were found to have fallen from the building. The tests soon came back, highlighting serious issues. On one of the facades, there were over 85 defects, most of them being serious in nature.

Caroline said: “When the survey came back we took immediate action to keep everyone safe. We had to take people out of rooms where we thought there was a danger and spend a lot of money on getting these crash decks in.”

The tower is now covered in scaffolding, and crash decks have been installed to prevent concrete from hitting the ground. The action has cost over a million pounds, all to fix a building that’s earmarked for demolition anyway.

“That’s the reality we’re dealing with,” said Caroline, “It houses the majority of our ward blocks and we can’t do without it right now.

“So, when we re-provide brand new ward beds, we can then remove the tower. But until then, it's that tricky balance on spending the minimum to keep it safe until you've got your new build.

“It's a bit like spending money on an old car. You have to get to that point where you accept that this isn't value for money anymore.”

She added: "Our top priority is keeping our patients and staff safe and we’re using the available funds to make sure this happens. Our staff work hard manage the immediate issues, but the steps we’ve taken to reduce risks are temporary and we desperately need our new hospital.”

On the side of the hospital sits some unassuming and slightly rotting portable cabins. They were placed here in 1984 temporarily. 40 years later, they’re still here, and house the hospital's laboratories.

“These are incredibly important for the hospital to function,” explained Caroline.

“It’s where we do most of our analytical work.”

Again, the state of the buildings is having an impact on the hospital’s work. The heating can fail, while wind and dampness can interfere with the highly sophisticated and expensive instruments.

However, this could soon change, as the cabins sit in an area earmarked for the new hospital. What is currently grass and rotting cabins should soon be a state-of-the-art facility that will change the way healthcare is delivered in the Bay forever.

Just up from the cabins is the brand new £15 million Day Surgery unit. Opened earlier this year, the building provides two new operating theatres which, over time will allow the Trust to support 4,500 more people each year.

Read next week’s Torbay Weekly to find out more about Torbay Hospital’s exciting plans for the future, as well as the new developments that are already leading the way.