SURGEON Bob Heddle has resigned from Kent and Canterbury Hospital.

Mr Heddle, who started work there in January, 1981, was at the forefront of the fight to save K&C from downgrading and said his decision to go now was a weight off his mind.

Although he said he will leave with no hard feelings, Mr Heddle added that K&C was no longer the place it once was and the atmosphere was atrocious.

He said: "I am nearly 63 so my resignation really amounts to a retirement. However, I had always intended to carry on working there until I was 65 but since the end of January when health services in east Kent were reconfigured I have sat and done virtually nothing.

"Now I am doing as much in a week as I used to do in a day and I can’t work like this. I know part of that is because the new day surgery centre at Canterbury is not yet open but now that emergency admissions at K&C have stopped I have spent three weeks sipping tea and doing half the work I did 10 years ago.

"I have been asked to work at Margate or Ashford but I do not feel that I would like to be on call that far away and I do not want to be a resident on-call.

"I just do not believe I could give a good service to my patients driving 18 miles across country on east Kent’s roads, especially in poor weather, between the three towns."

Mr Heddle said he was not enchanted with the way things were going at Kent and Canterbury Hospital and described it as a shadow of its former self.

"I have my patients whom I put down to be seen in my clinics and they are taken away and treated elsewhere," Mr Heddle said.

"They do not like this and neither do I. Doctors no longer have any control over running their own affairs and deciding to go has been a real weight off my mind. In fact, I nearly resigned a year ago and now, with the reconfiguration taking shape, it seems like the right time to go."

Mr Heddle said he had had 24 good years at K&C. "It was a lovely place in which to work and the best hospital in east Kent," he added.

"I have been very lucky and K&C has been fantastic. I have had so much support from patients, staff and the public, especially over the past three years."

Mr Heddle, who also has his own private practice, says he intends to work in the private sector and offer his skills to NHS hospitals in Kent.

"I shall throw myself on the market," he said. "The Chaucer has said I can work there and I’ll take my chances on what comes my way."

Mr Heddle said the last few years had been hard and he intended to spend more time at his holiday home in Orkney. He expects to leave the hospital in mid May.