SICK of seeing hundreds of cigarette butts littering their streets, people living near the Kent & Cannterbury have signed petition demanding the hospital rethinks its smoke ban.

The ban on smoking on all hospital grounds has forced smokers – and their litter – on to the residential streets around it.

Hundreds signed the petition and handed it to Canterbury and Whitstable MP Julian Brazier, who has forwarded it to health secretary Alan Johnson.

It was the Department of health which ordered the hospital to ban smoking.

And in a letter to Mr Johnson, Mr Brazier said: “I support the residents’ position on this."

He supported calls for a designated smoking area to be created on the hospital site.