Calls are mounting to reopen a Kent A&E department to relieve the pressure on a struggling hospitals trust recording some of the worst corridor waits in Britain.
Thousands are backing a petition to relaunch the emergency unit at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital following a staggering rise in the number of patients in east Kent enduring delays of 12 hours or more for a bed.
Corridors full of patients outside the cafe at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford last week
The department was downgraded to an urgent care centre in 2005 despite campaigners taking to the streets of London to protest the move.
But with demand surging and corridor waits soaring at east Kent’s two remaining acute A&E units, the push to reopen Canterbury’s is gathering pace.
It comes as figures suggest more than 14,000 emergency patients will have been left waiting 12 hours or more for a bed on a ward at the William Harvey in Ashford and QEQM in Margate in 2025. That compares to just 36 across the whole of 2019.
Ken Rogers is the chair of Concern for Health in East Kent (Chek), which led the demonstrations when Canterbury’s A&E closed more than 20 years ago.
He believes reopening the unit is the best way to tackle a crisis that has spiralled out of control in recent years.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “For more than two decades, East Kent has lived with the consequences of downgrading Kent & Canterbury Hospital.
Health campaigner Ken Rogers is calling for the A&E department at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital to be reopened
“The result has been dangerous delays, overcrowded emergency departments and the return of corridor care – something we were promised would never happen again.”
As well as launching a petition, which has attracted more than 7,000 supporters, Mr Rogers has also written to the Prime Minister urging him to commit to the reopening of an A&E in Canterbury.
“I know we have been here before, but the situation is now more dire than ever,” he said.
In his letter to Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Rogers wrote: “East Kent is on the brink of a population surge.
“Local plans across Canterbury, Dover, Thanet, Ashford and Swale will deliver tens of thousands of new homes, bringing an estimated 167,000 additional residents to the area over the coming years.
“This is the equivalent of adding a city larger than Oxford – without the extra hospitals, beds, or GP capacity required to support it.”
While the increase in lengthy A&E waiting times reflects a national trend, 12-hour waits in East Kent hospitals are among the worst in the country.
Dr Ian Higginson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, has warned there should be “howls of outrage” over deaths linked to long waits in A&E.
The A&E department at the QEQM Hospital in Margate is under pressure
He said corridor care has become so widespread it has been “normalised” among patients, staff and health leaders.
Last year, the college estimated more than 16,600 patients died after experiencing very long waits for a hospital bed in England.
That figure is equivalent to about 320 deaths every week, which Dr Higginson said would prompt immediate action if it were happening in any other setting.
“If we had 16,000 patients a year dying in bus crashes or in aircraft crashes or anywhere else there would be such howls of outrage something would be done about it,” he told PA.
He warned emergency departments across the country were “in big trouble”, with a lack of beds forcing unsafe care in corridors.
In September, the issues in east Kent made national headlines after KentOnline revealed the William Harvey had been forced to turn the hospital’s coffee shop into a makeshift ward.
Just weeks later, a KentOnline investigation shone a light on a bed-blocking scandal that was keeping patients in hospital for months after they were deemed well enough for discharge.
Patients being treated inside the repurposed coffee shop at the William Harvey Hospital in September
Figures show most delayed discharges are because a long-term care package need to be put in place before the patient can return home, such as daily visits to help with dressing and feeding. Others cannot be discharged until a suitable care home is found for them.
The issue is seen as the driving force behind the long waits as it leaves wards full and prevents new admissions from A&E, forcing staff to care for patients in corridors as there is simply no room for them.
Only this week, new pictures showed trollies outside the William Harvey cafe again due to a lack of space.
The final figures for 2025 will not be released until next week, but by the end of November there had already been 13,520 waits of 12 hours or more for a bed on a hospital ward in East Kent.
With pressure traditionally at its highest in the winter months, it means the total for the year is certain to eclipse the 13,986 recorded in 2024.
Most alarming for Mr Rogers is the speed at which the crisis has developed since 2019, when just 36 patients experienced a lengthy corridor wait.
“I fear the situation will only get worse unless we get Canterbury open again,” he said.
Beds filled with patients lining the corridors of the William Harvey in Ashford are a familiar sight
However, reopening an A&E in the city would be far from straightforward.
The unit was downgraded more than 20 years ago and no longer has the specialist staff, equipment or supporting services required to run a full, consultant-led emergency department.
Any restoration would require major national funding approval and a large increase in doctors and nurses at a time when the NHS is already struggling to staff existing A&Es.
Previous plans for a new super hospital in Canterbury, under a restructure of health services across east Kent, failed to materialise when a funding application was snubbed by the government in 2023.
In December, the East Kent Hospitals Trust announced it had received £29 million from the NHS to tackle its overstretched A&E facilities.
The trust has pledged to make improvements by expanding its same-day emergency care departments in both Ashford and Margate.
The new units, it says, will allow acute specialists to assess, diagnose and treat patients all on the day of arrival, reducing the need for them to be admitted to a ward.
It is hoped the upgrades will improve patient flow and capacity while reducing congestion on wards, freeing up vital space for patients needing to be admitted.
The number of 12-hour waits has spiralled in recent years, with the total in 2025 certain to eclipse 2024’s when December’s figures are included
Bosses say it “will benefit both patients and the healthcare system by reducing waiting times and hospital admissions”.
But Mr Rogers, who himself previously spent three days in a hospital corridor with pneumonia, has described the measure as “just a sticking plaster over a gaping wound”.
“Kent & Canterbury Hospital once provided excellent, life‑saving care for the whole region. It can – and must – do so again,” he said.
“Restoring full acute and A&E services is essential to ending corridor care, reducing dangerous delays, and giving East Kent the safe, dignified healthcare it deserves.”
The chief executive of East Kent Hospitals, Tracey Fletcher, is currently on “unplanned leave” from her £245,000-a-year post.
She has been temporarily replaced by chief medical officer Dr Des Holden.
Asked about calls to reopen Canterbury’s A&E, Ben Stevens, the Trust’s chief strategy and partnerships officer, said: “Kent and Canterbury Hospital plays a crucial role in east Kent’s hospital network, including providing a dedicated orthopaedic centre for planned surgery such as hip and knee replacements, which means people waiting for these operations are not at risk of their surgery being cancelled due to emergencies.
“We are tackling the long waits and over-crowding in our emergency departments, which we know are unacceptable.
“We will work with partner organisations in Kent and Medway and our local communities to implement the vision for NHS services, including hospital care, set out in the NHS 10-year plan.”
