Crown Hosting Data Centres: South Devon NHS Trust case study

Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust provide health and social care services to people in their own homes or in their local community. They also run Torbay Hospital (providing acute hospital services) as well as five community hospitals, stretching from Dawlish to Brixham. Around 9,000 staff are employed by the NHS Trust, including doctors, nurses, social workers, consultants and allied health professionals, as well as highly skilled managers, administrators and technical experts.

Their people work in a wide range of settings and locations across various communities, depending on their individual role or circumstances. They support around 500,000 face-to-face contacts with patients in their homes and communities each year and see over 78,000 people in their A&E department annually. They serve a resident population of approximately 286,000 people, plus about 100,000 visitors at any one time during the summer holiday season. Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust were proud to be the first NHS Trust in England to integrate hospital and community care with social care.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust started their onboarding journey with Crown Hosting in Spring 2025 following ongoing challenges with their onsite data centre set up and they’ve never looked back.

Before making the decision to move to Crown, they had experienced flooding, fires, security issues and an expensive network connectivity problem caused by a collapsed duct within their existing facilities.

There were also high running maintenance costs to consider, coupled with inefficiencies including power and the labour required to fix the issues, which could have been better utilised elsewhere.

These complications impacted on the reliability, availability and security of their data, which consequently called into question the resilience of their existing set up.

After studying and analysing the costs and inefficiencies, Elliot Brett (Project Manager, Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust) made what he describes as the “no brainer” decision to move and explained: “Allocating our money to moving data centres was a much smarter decision than attempting to fix the old one, particularly knowing it was not able to meet the same top tier standard as Crown.”

Whilst conducting research, Elliot identified Crown as the trusted partner of the UK government who regularly work with public sector bodies and provide significant cost savings, even when considering the cost of hiring loan equipment for the transition.

With hospitals who require access to data 24/7, 365 days a year, the process of relocating the existing servers was complex, including the migration of all data to loan equipment in a controlled manner and the transportation to the new site.

Despite this more complex, less conventional route, Elliot described the onboarding journey as “Amazing.” He continues: “The experience itself included an in-depth tour [of Crown’s facilities] which gave us great confidence. Since signing the contract, Crown has been brilliant. They’ve made setting up cabinets easy and customised them [for our needs]. Everything we asked for has been done and more.”

Particularly impressive is the exceptionally high standard of customer service and the speed of response from the service desk. Elliot explained “If I send an email to ask for anything, by the time I’ve gone to get a cup of tea, somebody has already replied!” Every request we’ve made has been met with flexibility and a willingness to meet our specific requirements.

Although the collaboration is in its infancy, Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust are confident that moving to Crown will solve all the previous challenges they faced, including alleviating maintenance concerns, improvements to the overall efficiency and a significant reduction in running costs.

There is a tangible feeling of excitement within the team and their target for full integration is December 2025. At this point, they’re keen to host colleagues from other NHS Trusts on-site to showcase their transition. Elliot is aiming to promote them as an example and wants to help other NHS Trusts benefit from the service and solutions that Crown provide.

When asked whether they would recommend Crown to others, Elliot replied; “Absolutely. If you’ve got important infrastructure and you need that reliability, Crown is the right place for you. We’re obviously a hospital so you need that 24/7 service, we’ve got no room for issues, downtime etc., you can’t get any better. It’s the gold standard of infrastructure with data centres. It’s everything we want and more.”

And what about those who are considering making the move, but still sitting on the fence? Elliot urges them to do the maths. Not only will Crown offer significant cost savings compared to on-site data centres, but the levels of service offered will outperform them too.