This is the main text of an email sent to NHS Devon – our Integrated Care Board, who are responsible for deciding how to slice the cake of NHS money for Devon – who to employ, where to employ them, how much to pay them and all the expenses of the clinic and hospital resources for Devon.

Sirs,

You will no doubt be aware of the furore that has been caused by your published note from last December that you have decided to cease paying rent for the Dartmoor Ward at Okehampton Community Hospital and hope to hand it back to NHS property services, saving £200,000 in the process.

This is seen by many as some form of attempt to “close the hospital”, a point that I have studiously attempted to explain properly in my statements as a Councillor.

However, in my background research about the activities of NHS Devon I have found a piece of information explaining how you carry out your duties, about which I am seriously concerned.

Apparently (according to your June 2023 Strategy Plan) you divide Devon into a series of sub-regions. You place the North Dartmoor Primary Care Network in the Eastern sub-region, along with Exeter and East Devon (including Sidmouth and Seaton). This sub-region has a population of some 400,000. Whereas Tavistock (with whom Okehampton and some other parts of the PCN are involved in West Devon Borough Council), is a sub-region on its own with just 60,000 population. In making that observation, I also note that Plymouth is treated as sub-region with 268,000 population.

I am a graduate geographer who understands the geography and demography of the County, fairly well. I cannot find any justification for such a division. To my way of thinking, at best, it is illogical and at worse perverse and discriminatory. I do not intend to give you a long list of reasons to justify my statements at this juncture. What I am going to do, is ask two questions which will allow our group to make a well-considered bid for a way forward.

In your published note you ask for suggestions and proposals from the community for the continued use of the “space” in Okehampton Community Hospital that the Dartmoor Ward formerly occupied. This we intend to do.

Our secondary objective, as a group, is to comprehensively research the health care situation in the area, so that we can make recommendations for content in a number of strategy plans which are currently in preparation, including a West Devon Borough Council Development Plan, an Okehampton Regeneration Plan, a Business Improvement District (BID) and finally a Neighbourhood Plan.

At this moment, we do not have sufficient statistics and evidence apart from our own anecdotal evidence and observations. It is not known in many quarters and fully understood in others, that Okehampton and its surroundings are the poorest area by weekly income in the whole of the United Kingdom (source = Office National Statistics) whilst at the same time Devon County Council consider that Okehampton is “a thriving market town”. This is a clear mismatch between evidence and planning. I fear the same may be true with the attitude of the ICB towards North Dartmoor PCN.

Thus the two questions are:

• How did the Board arrive at a decision to lump North Dartmoor PCN in with Exeter (and East Devon), with whom we have absolutely nothing in common?
• How could the Board justify creating a sub-region of just 60,000 population covering the town and surrounding area of Tavistock, with whom we have everything in common and share a District Council?

My quick feeling, based on geography and demography is that the Board would have been more correct to create a sub-region out of rural central Devon, including towns like Crediton, Okehampton, Moreton Hampstead, Hatherleigh and Holsworthy. If a strategic planner responded , “Ah yes! But none of these have proper hospital resources ……”, then perhaps that is exactly the point we are and have been trying to make for decades – central Devon, north of Dartmoor NEEDS a hospital and perhaps the best way to achieve that, is to expand the hospital in Okehampton.

We are in touch with groups fighting for Sidmouth and Seaton hospitals. In my opinion, East Devon could also make the same case that if the population of East Devon and Exeter is growing frenetically as it is, there could be a practical case for hiving off East Devon into a sub-region on its own.

Finally, if a discussion about sub-regions and how they are divided appears not sufficiently important to keep under constant review as the circumstances of demographics, change in Devon, then I have to ask, why have sub-regions at all?