HUNDREDS of readers have thrown their weight behind The Westmorland Gazette’s campaign to bring radiotherapy services to South Lakeland.

In its first week, more than 400 supporters have signed our petition to bring a treatment base to Kendal’s Westmorland General Hospital.

Emails and letters of support have flooded in as cancer patients and their families underlined reasons why we need a local radiotherapy base.

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron encouraged constituents to raise awareness and help reach a combined target of 10,000 signatures. The Gazette’s campaign is running parallel to one started by Mr Farron.

“Our community has stepped up once again and proved that it cares about the needs of local people,” said Mr Farron.

“We’ve won the battle for a chemotherapy unit in Kendal and I’m confident that if we get enough public support we can get this radiotherapy unit too.”

Barrow and Furness MP John Woodcock said his constituents currently faced a 70-mile journey to Preston, taking about an hour and a half.

“Kendal is still about 30 miles away, but from a Furness patient’s point of view, it would be better than travelling to Preston.”

Among supporters who signed our petition is a Sedbergh widow who has joined the campaign on the first anniversary of her husband’s death after he died from bowel cancer.

Syd McLennan’s life was substantially prolonged by radiotherapy treatments, which helped hold his cancer at bay for four years.

The 63-year-old travelled to Preston every day for six weeks for treatment - a journey that his wife said put them both under pressure.

Lyn McLennan, 66, said her husband felt passionately that radiotherapy treatment should be closer to home and wrote letters to campaign on the issue.

“He would have been very proud to think he had been able to help in any way to make this come to fruition,” she said.

Kendal cancer survivor Geoff Cater has also spoken out to encourage families, friends and pupils to fight for a local radiotherapy service.

The Kirkbie Kendal media studies teacher has been told his prostate cancer is in remission, thanks to eight weeks of daily radiotherapy treatments at Royal Preston Hospital.

The 62-year-old, of Natland, battled sickness and exhaustion caused by daily radiotherapy sessions in order to continue teaching classes each morning.

He said: “I would come back home from Preston and go straight to sleep with the hope that I’d be okay to work the following day.

“The children were awesome. They used to say: ‘You put your head down on the desk and we will keep working’ and I felt like doing just that - that’s how much it takes it out of you.

“To have a centre in Kendal would make a huge difference to hundreds of people. I will do anything to get the message out.”