MORE than 1,000 people braved the elements to show their support for plans to build a £15 million cancer unit in South Lakeland.

Crowds of campaigners – including a number of patients who have to travel 90 minutes for treatment – joined MP Tim Farron in Kendal on Saturday as he walked to Westmorland General Hospital to hand a petition to health chiefs.

The Westmorland and Lonsdale MP had trekked 40 miles to the town from Preston – where he visited the Rosemere cancer unit – to highlight the distance that local patients have to travel for chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

And he said he was nearly ‘moved to tears’ by the public support.

He said: “It was hard work and the weather was grim at times but the fact that people turned out to back the campaign shows the strength of feeling.

“I spoke to a number of South Lakeland patients while at Preston, including a man from Windermere who was faced with travelling there 37 days in a row for treatment.

"It is not only stressful for the people involved to have to travel so far, but time consuming and costly.”

Alan Baverstock, from Milnthorpe, who joined Mr Farron on the final eight miles of the walk, said his mother-in-law had been faced with travelling to Preston for five days for treatment for skin cancer.

“At the age of 93 that is not an easy task, it was very tiring for her and to have a service in Kendal would have made the world of difference,” he said.

In the past, NHS leaders have called for the public to show support for the development of an Ambulatory Cancer Care Unit, the location of which has yet to be finalised.

Cumbria’s director of public health Dr John Ashton – one of the NHS leaders who met campaigners – said the turn-out in Kendal had been ‘encouraging’.

Tony Halsall, chief executive of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust which is keen for the unit to be built, said he was “really pleased to see such strong support”.

He added: “We're in the middle of the biggest gap between radiotherapy centres in England.”

If funding is approved, the new unit will bring radiotherapy and poss-ibly day case chemotherapy to patients – some of whom have to travel more than double the national recommended travel time for treatment.

Kevin McGee, chair of the Cumbria and Lancashire NHS Collaborative Commissioning Board, said he hoped to be in a position to confirm key details such as the cost, site and timescale of the service by the end of this year.