Why our campaign has grown

We started with the heart of the hospital

We began as The Heart Campaign, formed in response to proposals that put emergency cardiac services at Torbay Hospital at risk of being centralised at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital in Exeter.

Torbay's cardiac service has earned its reputation the hard way, through rapid treatment, strong clinical practice and good outcomes for patients. Consultants at the unit have reported that national audit data placed the service as high as 4th in the country for emergency angioplasty (stent) outcomes, and the department has received national recognition for excellence in patient care.

Thousands of people across Torbay and South Devon stood with us. Those cardiology proposals were then paused.

Paused is not withdrawn. That distinction matters, and we have not forgotten it.

Then we kept looking

As our research and Freedom of Information work continued, it became clear that our concerns could not stop at cardiology.

We are now asking serious questions about changes affecting other essential services at Torbay Hospital, among them:

  • The proposed move of routine histopathology and cellular pathology to Gadeon House in Exeter

  • The future shape of oral and maxillofacial surgery

  • The longer-term future and resilience of Accident & Emergency and other acute services

Presented one at a time, each change can be explained away as a separate clinical or organisational decision. Seen together, they raise a far larger question.

What is the long-term plan for Torbay Hospital, and will it go on providing the full range of acute services that the people of Torbay and South Devon rely on?

That question is why The Heart Campaign has become Save Torbay Hospital.

A hospital is not a set of separate departments

We are not against NHS reform, and we are not against change that can be shown to improve patient care.

Our concern is the cumulative effect of moving services, expertise, staff and equipment away from Torbay. Cardiology, pathology, surgery, emergency medicine, intensive care and diagnostics all depend on one another. Weaken one and the effects are felt across the others, and in time across the hospital's ability to function as a full acute hospital at all.

For anyone having a heart attack or a stroke, or facing major trauma or sepsis, time matters. Distance matters. Having specialist clinicians, diagnostic services and supporting departments in the same building matters.

What we are asking for

We want full transparency about any plan, option or discussion that could affect:

  • Cardiology and emergency cardiac intervention

  • Histopathology and other pathology services

  • Oral and maxillofacial surgery

  • Accident & Emergency and associated acute services

  • The overall future status and capability of Torbay Hospital

We want clear evidence that decisions are being taken because they will improve outcomes for patients, and not simply because they move services elsewhere or reduce costs.

Our position

Save Torbay Hospital is no longer a campaign about one department. It is a campaign about the future of our acute hospital, and about the right of people in Torbay and South Devon to reach safe, high-quality hospital care quickly and close to home.

We will keep asking questions, keep seeking evidence, and keep challenging decisions where the evidence does not stand up.

Our message is simple. We need to strengthen NHS services that already work. We should not dismantle them one department at a time.

Campaign Directors

Susie Colley (Campaign Chair)

Susie began her nursing career at The Royal London Hospital in 1964, later working in Australia before returning to the UK to train in midwifery and cardiothoracic theatre at St Thomas' Hospital, then in neurosurgery at the Western General in Scotland. After a stint at The Wellington Hospital in London, she moved to Devon, where she raised her daughter whilst continuing to work in healthcare.

Following the loss of her husband to an aortic aneurysm 27 years ago, Susie established a medical insurance brokerage that grew to support more than 4,500 clients worldwide before she sold the business in 2024.

As Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, Susie has been a persistent voice on local issues. She now chairs The Heart Campaign, drawing on both her professional experience and personal understanding of cardiac care. She is determined to ensure that Torbay's cardiac services remain accessible and local, and that decisions about them are led by evidence rather than geography.

Dr Phil Keeling

Dr Keeling qualified at Barts in 1985, having completed both his BSc and MD. After training in cardiology across London, he was appointed as a consultant cardiologist at Torbay in 1996. Over nearly three decades there, he built cardiac services from the ground up, bringing in cardiac nurse specialists, establishing one-stop clinics for patients, and setting up dedicated clinics for inherited cardiac conditions and transoesophageal echocardiography.

His work expanded services across heart failure, chest pain assessment, arrhythmias, and clinical research. Beyond his hospital work, he contributed to regional and national committees, and his efforts were recognised with three national awards. He has published more than 100 papers throughout his career.

Dr Keeling retired in June 2025. He is married with three children and two dogs.

Margaret Forbes-Hamilton

Margaret was born in New Zealand to English parents and grew up in a household where volunteering and community campaigning were simply part of life. She moved to the UK in her twenties and lived across England and Scotland before settling in Torquay with her family in 1991.

She quickly became involved with school and community groups, and that pattern has continued. She currently chairs the Torre and Upton Community Partnership and the Torbay Greenspace Forum, and sits on the Shadow Town Deal Board and the Torquay Neighbourhood Forum. After many years of self-employment, Margaret spent the last 17 years of her working life as a librarian—which may explain her fondness for scrutinising documents.

Our Journey So Far

This timeline traces the real sequence of events that led to the threat over Torbay Hospital's cardiac unit – from the initial proposals in early 2025, through the public outcry that forced a temporary withdrawal, to the ongoing fight to establish the facts and hold decision-makers to account.

It brings together documented milestones from NHS Devon, statements from clinicians, public meetings, community reports and campaign activity. As new information emerges, this timeline will continue to grow.

  • 2025 A year of proposals, public pressure, and a sustained fight to protect Torbay's cardiac unit.
  • February 2025 NHS Devon announces an eight-week "test and learn" trial to move out-of-hours primary angioplasty (pPCI) for heart attacks from Torbay Hospital to the Royal Devon & Exeter (RDE). Torbay cardiologists and MPs raise urgent concerns about patient safety and the impact of longer journey times.
  • May 2025 After strong opposition from consultants, patients, campaigners and elected representatives, NHS Devon withdraws the trial proposal. The decision is presented as a "pause", and local clinicians warn that the underlying threat to Torbay's cardiac unit remains.
  • July 2025 A report is published ahead of the 31 July NHS Devon ICB meeting, setting out work on a county-wide "case for change" covering prevention, emergency care and planned cardiology services across Devon. The ICB discusses this at its meeting. No specific relocation proposal is put forward, but campaigners note that emergency cardiac care at Torbay is now being considered within a wider reconfiguration.
  • August 2025 Public Governor John Kiddey, who had previously spoken out against moving emergency cardiac services from Torbay to Exeter, resigns from the Council of Governors. The Trust records this as his personal decision, adding to local concern about how dissenting views are being handled.
  • September – October 2025 NHS Devon begins wider engagement on the future of cardiovascular services across the county. The Heart Campaign steps up Freedom of Information requests to establish the financial and clinical evidence base behind the proposed changes. FOI responses from RDE confirm that its cardiac catheterisation labs are already fully utilised during weekdays and that 284 inpatients have been transferred to Torbay since October 2023 – directly contradicting claims that RDE can easily absorb Torbay's workload.
  • November 2025 The ICB updates its timetable for the formal consultation on cardiovascular services. The Heart Campaign submits further FOI requests asking whether key decision-makers were aware of a Royal College of Physicians review identifying quality concerns at RDE – and whether that information was factored into the Case for Change. Business groups, including Brixham Chamber, call for maximum public participation in the process.
  • December 2025 – January 2026 A Freedom of Information response from South Western Ambulance Service (SWASFT) confirms that prehospital thrombolysis – the clot-busting treatment used when a patient cannot reach a cardiac catheterisation lab within safe time limits – is no longer available to patients in the Torbay area. NICE guidelines require thrombolysis to be available where timely primary angioplasty cannot be guaranteed. The campaign formally challenges the ICB to explain how it has assured itself that the proposed changes would not breach these standards. A detailed follow-up FOI is submitted asking for the full timeline of awareness of the RCP review and how it relates to the Case for Change.
  • February 2026 After sustained pressure from the campaign, Trust CEO Joe Teape confirms in writing that the cardiac catheterisation labs at Torbay Hospital are to be replaced at a cost of £5.7m – representing approximately 40% of the Trust's entire annual capital budget. A national funding bid was unsuccessful. The manufacturer will stop guaranteeing repair support from June 2026. Replacement is not expected to be complete until September 2027, creating a 15-month window of significant technical risk. The Trust acknowledges the risk level as HIGH.
  • March 2026 The warnings prove well-founded. Over the weekend of 8–9 March, both cardiac catheterisation labs at Torbay Hospital fail simultaneously due to unplanned technical faults. A patient from Teignmouth requiring urgent cardiac intervention is reportedly refused a transfer to RDE and is instead sent to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth. The campaign escalates immediately, writing to the Trust CEO and Medical Director and copying in local MPs. On 12 March, the Trust's Deputy CEO confirms both labs failed and acknowledges that existing procedures for managing cardiac diverts were inadequate. However, the Trust states that RDE "offered support" – directly contradicting the account of the Teignmouth patient's transfer to Plymouth. The campaign submits formal FOI requests to all organisations involved, asking for the documented divert log, transfer records, and cross-trust communications to establish what actually happened.
  • 26 March – 8 April 2026 At its Joint Committee on 26 March 2026, NHS Devon decides not to progress the case for change programme as a standalone programme, absorbing it instead into its five-year commissioning plan and neighbourhood health model. The ICB confirms this formally in an FOI response dated 8 April 2026, stating it "will not progress the case for change programme at this time" and that there are "no plans to change where cardiology services are delivered right now." The campaign welcomes the pause but notes the language is carefully qualified throughout. "At this time" and "right now" are not permanent commitments. The case for change has not been abandoned – it has been absorbed into broader planning where it will be harder to scrutinise. Seven governance and financial questions raised in the campaign's formal challenge of 27 February 2026 – including how the ICB assured itself of RDE's capacity given its £40m+ deficit – remain unanswered. The campaign continues to hold the ICB to account.
  • 13 April 2026 Community Meeting to Support the Heart Campaign – Monday 13 April at 17:30, The Grand Hotel, Torquay. The campaign shares plans for forthcoming demonstrations and actions. Everyone is welcome. Wear red to show your support, bring others with you, and help make our community voice impossible to ignore.
  • 14 April 2026 NHS Devon ICB publishes a public Q&A on its "One Plan for Devon", confirming that histopathology services are moving from Torbay to a new laboratory at Gadeon House in Exeter, alongside a £14.2m redevelopment of the Emergency Department. The ICB states there are no plans to relocate primary angioplasty services. The campaign challenges the ICB's practice of issuing unsigned correspondence from a generic inbox rather than a named officer.
  • 26 April to 7 May 2026 Following the ICB's confirmation, the campaign submits a comprehensive Freedom of Information request to Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, seeking the full evidence base behind the pathology move, including business cases, financial modelling, clinical risk assessments and the governance trail back to 2018. The Trust's Board confirms the relocation to Gadeon House at its public meeting on 7 May.
  • May to July 2026 Trust responses through May, June and July confirm that £4.6m of ring-fenced government funding is being spent on the Gadeon House move, that the building has been taken on a fifteen-year lease, and that the decision was approved under "urgent" governance rules six days after staff were told the outcome. Later responses reveal that clinical risk assessments were still being completed after the lease had already been signed, and that the Trust holds no efficiency analysis to support the savings it has claimed. The Trust also confirms that the campaign has instructed solicitors Irwin Mitchell LLP.
  • 6 to 10 June 2026 The campaign learns that Torbay Council has agreed a £7.5m loan to Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to help fund the Gadeon House pathology hub in Exeter, and writes to both hospital boards and the council leader asking for the business case and the impact on local cancer surgery, which depends on rapid tissue testing during operations. Three of the Trust's recent refusals are formally challenged. In two cases, the Trust admits it holds no analysis showing the savings it claims. The campaign escalates the wider pattern of service transfers to the Prime Minister on 9 June and to the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee on 10 June, arguing that their cumulative effect may legally require full public consultation.
  • 23 June 2026 Further disclosure reveals that the Gadeon House lease runs for twenty-five years with a fifteen-year break clause, and that the building was awarded directly rather than through competitive tender.
  • 1 to 5 July 2026 An announcement on the Trust's staff intranet confirms that payroll services have already transferred to a shared service hosted by Royal Devon, effective from 1 July. Staff are told after the change has taken place; the public is not told at all. The campaign writes to the Chief Executive asking whether this is the first stage of a wider programme of moving functions out of Torbay, and submits Freedom of Information requests asking what NHS Devon ICB actually spends on the Torbay and South Devon population, whose own published figures show expenditure of roughly £102m in March 2026 alone.
  • 14 July 2026 The campaign formally incorporates as Save Torbay Hospital Ltd, marking its evolution from the original Heart Campaign into an organisation covering the full range of acute services under threat at Torbay Hospital, including cardiology, pathology, adult social care and Trust finance.
  • 5 August 2026 NHS Devon ICB responds to the spending request by stating it does not hold any modelling of the cost of moving acute services out of Torbay Hospital, the same answer it has now given on business cases, impact assessments and cost comparisons. On its own account, the body making the decisions holds no financial modelling of what those decisions would cost.
  • Looking Ahead Several Freedom of Information requests remain significantly overdue, including questions about the Royal College of Physicians review and the financial viability of shifting cardiac workload to Royal Devon, and a related complaint is now with the Information Commissioner's Office awaiting allocation to a case officer. Letters to the Prime Minister and the Commons Health and Social Care Committee remain unanswered. With solicitors now instructed, the campaign is weighing whether the cumulative effect of the cardiology, pathology and payroll changes amounts to a substantial variation in NHS services that requires formal public consultation. This timeline will be updated as new information emerges. The fight to keep vital acute services in Torbay continues.

This campaign is only as strong as the people behind it.

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