ALL Hampshire pensioner Gordon Sennett wants for Christmas is a wheelchair.

Without one he faces being a prisoner in his own home during the long winter days.

Last September he had his cancerous foot amputated in a successful operation at South-ampton General Hospital.

Gordon was switched to the recuperation unit of the city's Royal South Hants Hospital.

But the 66-year-old former Assistant District Commission-er for Scouts was not prepared for the wheelchair problems ahead.

The one he was given for use on the hospital ward was so small that Gordon, who is 5ft 10in, had his knees virtually under his chin.

"It was like a child's chair," said Gordon of Pinewood Close, Romsey.

Two days after his operation he was measured for an NHS wheelchair and was told that it would be ready in six to seven weeks.

After eight weeks he contacted the hospital to be told that a wheelchair would not be available for two to three months.

He said: "I had absolutely first class treatment and care from the surgeons and nurses and excellent physiotherapy."

But he said the delays over getting a wheelchair had become nonsense.

He has managed to borrow a wheelchair from Romsey Red Cross but it is not robust enough to use outside in the winter.

And his wheelchair dilemma is shared by another Romsey resident, Alan Kemish, who had his foot amputated within an hour of Gordon's operation.

He also borrowed a wheelchair from the Red Cross but there was nowhere for his limb to rest. So he was forced to adapt the chair by making a wooden rest himself.

Now Romsey MP Sandra Gidley has taken up the cases and is quizzing the health authorities over the delays.

Commenting on both cases, she said: "Surely this cannot be the way to treat people.

"These two cases must be the tip of the iceberg of NHS under- resourcing and inefficiency."

A spokesman for Southamp-ton Community Health Services NHS Trust, which runs the wheelchair service, said: "Obviously we are sorry that there has been a delay in getting wheelchairs to people and we are doing what we can to speed up the process.

"Demand for NHS wheelchairs has gone up and there are many different kinds of wheelchairs that often have to be individually adapted.

"In the case of these two gentlemen, orders for wheelchairs have gone in and they should get them certainly by the end of December and hopefully by Christmas."