To: NHS Property Services, Devon ICB, Mel Stride MP.
Stop the Sale of Moretonhampstead Hospital – Return It to the People of Moreton
Primary Ask
We call on NHS Property Services, the Devon Integrated Care Board, and our MP, Mel Stride, to halt the planned sale of the Moretonhampstead Hospital building and work with local residents, community organisations, and the GP practice to transfer the site into community ownership for local health, care, and wellbeing services.
Why is this important?
Moretonhampstead Community Hospital was originally established for the people of Moretonhampstead and the surrounding area. Although it is no longer a hospital with beds, it remains a valuable community space suited to hosting local healthcare, district nursing, a care agency, and wider community projects.
NHS Property Services is now preparing to sell the building on the open market. This comes despite more than a decade of pressure from the local GP practice, Wellmoor, and other local groups to secure a community-led future for the site. To date, there has been no sustained support from our MP or the Devon ICB to help the community regain ownership of the building.
We were informed that district nurses had to leave the building because the roof was leaking and the site was unsafe. As soon as the building was vacated, we understand that Devon ICB was able to declare it surplus to requirements and begin the process of instructing NHS Property Services to arrange disposal. We are now told that the roof has been repaired.
NHS Property Services has, to date, not permitted local organisations access to carry out a full independent survey. This makes it impossible for the community to present an informed proposal for reuse.
The GP practice fully supports a community-led plan but cannot afford to buy the hospital and cannot relocate. The practice must remain in its existing health centre, which itself requires funding to renovate and improve. This makes a community ownership model even more important — ensuring the hospital building is used for hosting local healthcare, district nursing, a care agency, and wider community wellbeing projects, while the health centre remains the base for GP care.
Local residents, the GP practice, and community groups are ready to take responsibility for the hospital if given time and support to do so. This would protect the building for NHS and community use and prevent its loss to private development.
We call for:
We call for:
- An immediate pause on any sale or disposal process by NHS Property Services.
- Guaranteed access for the community to carry out a full independent building survey within the next 8 weeks.
- Agreement in principle to a transfer of the site at a nominal cost of £1, recognising its historic purpose and community value.
- Support from the Integrated Care Board to develop a health and community hub on the site which would include; district nurses, a care agency, GP overflow and local wellbeing services.
Witnessing this building edge toward a quiet sale is bleakly predictable. Rural primary care and rural communities have been treated as an afterthought by succesive governments — too small to invest in, too remote to understand, and too insignificant to trouble the priorities of larger boards.
The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS barely acknowledges that rural general practice exists at all. The system continues to chase bigger solutions, bigger networks, and ill fitting administrative geographies. Yet every bit of real-world evidence shows the opposite: small communities work. We look after each other, we adapt, we are small but significant and we deliver care in ways no distant “neighbourhood model” would be capable of.
This hospital has stood here for more than a century, shaped by the same landscape that shaped the town. Conan Doyle wrote about Dartmoor that “The longer one stays here the more the spirit of the moor sinks into one’s soul.” It has sunk into this building too — into its walls, its purpose, and the generations it has served. It is remarkable that bureaucracy cannot see what is obvious to anyone who lives here: this is not surplus, it is an anchor. If it is lost, it will be because the system has forgotten what community healthcare looks like.
The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS barely acknowledges that rural general practice exists at all. The system continues to chase bigger solutions, bigger networks, and ill fitting administrative geographies. Yet every bit of real-world evidence shows the opposite: small communities work. We look after each other, we adapt, we are small but significant and we deliver care in ways no distant “neighbourhood model” would be capable of.
This hospital has stood here for more than a century, shaped by the same landscape that shaped the town. Conan Doyle wrote about Dartmoor that “The longer one stays here the more the spirit of the moor sinks into one’s soul.” It has sunk into this building too — into its walls, its purpose, and the generations it has served. It is remarkable that bureaucracy cannot see what is obvious to anyone who lives here: this is not surplus, it is an anchor. If it is lost, it will be because the system has forgotten what community healthcare looks like.
