Anger as Totnes care home ‘left to rot’ by county council

THE future of what was once a flagship home for the elderly in Totnes is causing anger as the county council owners leave the building to ‘rot’ while the town’s elderly are having to be shipped to care homes miles away.

But whatever happens when the county council makes up its mind what to do with the old building, it seems the Rushbrook complex in the centre of Totnes will never be used as a home for the elderly again.

It does not form part of the old folks’ home sell-off which had just been announced as the county council looks at privatising its care homes.

Instead a county council spokesman said the Devon County Council owners were ‘still thinking’ about what they plan to do with it.

“It won’t be used for adult social care,” she confirmed.

Meanwhile Totnes’ Green county councillor Paula Black condemned the county for leaving the building empty for more than 18 months.

“It should not be sitting there rotting. It’s an appalling waste of resources,” she said.

And Totnes Town Council leader Tony Mead said: “The continued silence is an absolute disgrace.”

He said that elderly people in Totnes who need to go into care homes and cannot afford to go private are being ‘shipped’ to homes in Paignton, Newton Abbot or even Ivybridge.

“We have got a situation now where a care home which was left to the people of Totnes has been left to rot while the elderly who need to go into care homes are being shipped far and wide away from their families and friends, which is not satisfactory,” he said.

The Rushbrook complex, next to the town’s community hospital, was run as a county council residential home for more than 40 years after the house and grounds were willed to the town by popular GP Stanley Jellicoe when he died in 1961.

When the new Totnes Community Hospital was built, it was deliberately linked to the Rushbrook complex.

But the complex is now empty and is in very poor condition in places.

When the county council was looking at handing over the running of its care homes to a single private company just over a year ago, Rushbrook was to have been included in the deal and plans were even drawn up to knock the old building down and build a complex of private and social care flats — until the whole deal fell through almost exactly a year ago this month.

Last year Totnes council called for an investigation into possible covenants that were thought to have been placed on the use of the building when it was originally willed to the town.

But solicitors have declared that no such restrictive covenants exist any longer, if they existed in the first place, explained town council clerk Dave Edwards.

Mrs Black said that there had been suggestions that it could be used as a new centre for the disabled but that was extremely unlikely because the building is in a recognised flood zone.