A radiographer who turned to drink after his alcoholic partner starved to death in their home has been suspended.

Roderick Stobart was suspended for 12 months from the Health Professions Council (HPC) register after admitting to a disciplinary panel he was an alcoholic.

Mr Stobart admitted at an inquest last year he had chosen not to seek medical treatment for his girlfriend Clare Kelly, despite working at the Princess Royal Hospital, within walking distance of the couple’s flat in Colwell Gardens, Haywards Heath.

Alcoholic Miss Kelly, 45, weighed just five and a half stone when she died on July 6, 2006.

Mr Stobart drove her, wrapped in her bed sheets, to the Princess Royal where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

The inquest heard she had only left the flat where the couple lived a handful of times in the previous three years.

Her family told the hearing she looked like a “concentration camp victim” the last time they saw her, six months before her death.

A panel of the HPC’s conduct and competence committee heard that while employed by the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust Mr Stobart had been drinking heavily and by his own admission had become dependent on alcohol.

He had not informed the management of the trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital, or sought any help regarding the problem.

The panel found that in not alerting his employer to his alcohol problems Mr Stobart was guilty of misconduct. They also ruled that the issues raised regarding his performance amounted to lack of competence.

Panel chairman Elspeth Metcalfe said: “The result of these findings is that both the misconduct and lack of competence allegations are well founded. The circumstances are such that the panel consider that Mr Stobart cannot at present be permitted to return to clinical practice as a radiographer.”

Mr Stobart was suspended from the HPC register for 12 months. He had been “excluded” from his job by the trust in March last year while an internal investigation was carried out into his behaviour surrounding Miss Kelly’s death. The suspension order will be reviewed before it expires.

If Mr Stobart wishes to return to work he must present the reviewing panel with evidence of his sustained good health.