Underperforming NHS Trusts: Government Oversight Debate
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Steve Darling
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Underperforming NHS Trusts: Government Oversight
Steve Darling Excerpts(1 day, 20 hours ago)
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Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) on securing this extremely important debate.
I serve the population with the highest number of frail elderly people, and the irony is that our hospital is frail and elderly. It is the third oldest in the country, and the poor quality of the estate massively impacts the service that can be delivered to my community. More than 80% of it is not fit for purpose. We were one of the areas promised a new hospital by the previous Conservative Government, but sadly we are now in wave 2. There have been more than 700 sewage leaks across the hospital in recent years, and that impacts on clinical areas. Members can draw their own conclusions about how that has shunted treatment for patients down the line.
The tower block at Torbay is swathed in scaffolding to stop bits of it falling off and braining patients. In February, my hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) and for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) and I wrote to the Minister, backing our NHS managers, who desperately need an £8 million investment to sort out the tower block. We wrote again, and I met the Minister in September to bang the drum again, and we got £1.8 million, rather than £8 million.
Devon and Somerset fire and rescue service has now served a fire safety notice on our trust, as it has serious safety concerns about patients, and the CQC served another warning notice in the last few days. The chickens have now come home to roost. We need action. We need the cheque that I asked for in September in the post to tackle the fire safety issues in the tower block.
The staff are doing incredible work, but the patients deserve better. Will the Minister meet me and other colleagues from south Devon constituencies to explore the impact of the fire safety notice and the CQC warning? There are rumours swirling around the internet about the closure of beds in Torbay hospital.