Residents are asking Dartmouth Town Council to back their call for the town’s hospital to be reopened.

Their call comes after Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust’s plan to open a health and well-being centre at the former River View care home collapsed with the trust and the owners of the building unable to reach agreement over its lease.

Ahead of the public meeting about health care to be held in Dartmouth this month, concerned residents met in Browns Hotel in Dartmouth to discuss how they would like to engage with the Trust.

Torbay and South Devon Clinical Commissioning Group and Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust promised to provide alternative heath facilities in Dartmouth before the hospital was shut last year.

A spokesman for the campaigners said after the meeting there was a clear consensus that the hospital should be reopened and function as a health and wellbeing centre until such time as a replacement facility was in place ready to be used.

The group has drafted a letter to Dartmouth Town Council, calling for its support.

The letter reads: “We as the undersigned council tax payers of Dartmouth Clifton and Townstal Wards and Kingswear, do formally, as we are entitled to in law, request that Dartmouth town council addresses our wishes as expressed below, representing these views to the relevant authorities.

“We wish Dartmouth Town Council to use the authority and power of its offices to work towards a reopening of Dartmouth Hospital until such a time as an alternative Health and Wellbeing Centre is ready to open.

“We will work with you and others to construct viable and sensible strategies for achieving this aim.” The letter was signed by around 20 members of the group.

A group spokesman said it is evident people are passionate about the failure of the trust to deliver on previously made promises.

People at the meeting said they were not prepared to be told what they will be getting, but believed it was time the residents told the trust what they want and expect.

The spokesman said it was hoped the trust will then use its expertise to work out a means of delivering what the people of Dartmouth and the surrounding area want.

Group members also said they recognised the NHS was struggling at the moment, but the spokesman added: “We should not accept that a temporary re-opening of the hospital is unaffordable. The Trust have saved money on the rent which they would have paid Riverview’s owners and the costs of conversion.”

Anyone interested in joining the group, is invited to go along to Browns Hotel next week on Wednesday, May 9, at 11am.

The public meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 14, at St Saviour’s Church at 7pm where all residents are welcome to attend to listen to the trust and ask questions.

Questions for the panel can be submitted to Pillars (newsagents), Dartmouth Caring, Old Market Cafe, Spar at Mayflower Close, Leisure Centre and Lidl by Tuesday, May 8. On the night, questions will also be allowed from the floor.

The hospital stopped admitting new patients from March 13, 2017, when the CCG said it was “satisfied that new services are in place’.

The CCG then agreed that the trust could close the inpatients beds in Dartmouth.

Negotiations to move the town’s health services to the two unoccupied floors at River View fell through in January this year when the trust’s revised offer to rent the building was rejected.

The plan was for doctors, the outpatient clinic and Dartmouth Caring to all move to River View, where six hospital beds and a care home would be managed by a new nursing home operator.