A MYSTERY benefactor has stepped in with £30,000 to help hospital campaigners foot their legal bill.

The benefactor, who wants to remain anonymous, has given Concern for Health in East Kent the money as an interest free loan.

In the last few days CHEK and Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority settled costs from November's judicial review out of court.

CHEK agreed to pay £65,000, just over half the £124,000 the campaigners had originally been ordered to pay. The settlement means that the case will not now go to the High Court on Friday which would have cost CHEK another £10,000 in legal fees.

But as part of the deal the money must be paid by Tuesday, August 12, and although CHEK has already raised £35,000, they still had a balance of £30,000 to be found.

Until the benefactor stepped in the 12 committee members faced finding the cash from their own pockets.

CHEK will still have to repay the money, but the loan has taken the immediate pressure off, said chairman David Shortt.

"This has been a sword of Damacles hanging over us for many months. It is a great relief that it has been resolved," he stressed. "I could not be more grateful to the generous benefactor who has come forward to help us out of our financial nightmare."

CHEK members will now be fund-raising in earnest to repay the loan. Vice-chairman Ken Rogers said: "We always believed that common sense would prevail in the end, but it is galling to think that the people of east Kent will still have to pay £65,000, even when they have been proved right all along.

"They already pay for the health service through tax and National Insurance, but now we all have to pay more because of the stubbornness of the trust in not listening to us."

In a statement Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority stressed that the court had decided CHEK should pay the NHS's legal costs as well as their own.

"The health authority wanted to strike a reasonable balance between our duty to recover public funds and our reluctance to enforce onerous financial penalties upon individuals.

"The authority accepted the first reasonable offer of settlement made by CHEK - still a substantial sum but less than they would have had to pay if the costs had been decided by the court on Friday."