A disabled six-year-old girl at the centre of a High Court life support treatment fight has died, a lawyer said.

Pippa Knight from Strood was being treated at Evelina Children's Hospital in London.

Her mum Paula Parfitt had been fighting doctors in court who wanted to turn off her life support machine.

A High Court ruling handed down by Mr Justice Poole in the family division in January said Pippa should be allowed to die.

The 41-year-old mounted a series of challenges but failed to persuade judges in the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights to overturn Mr Justice Poole’s ruling.

He recently approved a plan drawn up by specialists to withdraw treatment.

The judge, who heard that Pippa’s father is dead, has described the case as “heart-rending”.

Pippa was born on April 20, 2015 and initially developed normally, but in December 2016 she became unwell and began to suffer seizures, the judge heard.

She was admitted first to Medway Maritime Hospital and later referred to the Guys and St Thomas's Hospital NHS Trust.

It was there that she was diagnosed with acute necrotising encephalopathy which led to her suffering brain damage.

The little girl has been treated at Evelina hospital for the past two years where she had been kept alive by mechanical ventilation in intensive care since January 2019.

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