Campaigners fighting to save Ilkley's Coronation Hospital will find out exactly what they are up against next month.

Airedale Primary Care Trust (PCT) plans to launch consultation papers detailing proposals for the future of the hospital at a board meeting on Tuesday, February 4.

The news comes in the same week that Airedale Community Health Council (CHC) pledged to take up the case for the hospital's survival with the Secretary of State for Health.

Despite strong local opposition, the closure of Ilkley, Skipton and Bingley hospitals is being considered by Airedale NHS Trust in a bid to cut an estimated £2.8 million budget deficit.

But giving an update on the situation, Airedale CHC's chief officer John Godward questioned the supposed link between services provided in the town and the Trust's financial difficulties. At Ilkley Parish Council on Monday, Mr Godward urged councillors to demand access to the Trust's accounts.

He said: "We are greatly concerned about how the possible changes will affect the people of Ilkley and the health of the people of Ilkley.

"The threat of closure of the Coronation Hospital has had to be borne by all of us for more than six months and in my opinion this is unreasonable. The Airedale CHC sympathises with the Airedale Trust, which offers some of the best services in the country but faces an estimated £2.8 million deficit in its budget.

"But we have not seen any figures as to where the overspend is occurring and are therefore not able to say if the closure proposals, if they are to come, will affect the deficit.

"The CHC has never accepted that spending on the Coronation Hospital in Ilkley, Bingley Hospital and Skipton Hospital is the reason for the overspending, and that's why we feel the proposals are unacceptable.

"Closure of these hospitals is an easy option, it is short termism, and it is the NHS patients who will suffer because Airedale NHS Trust cannot balance its budget."

However, Airedale NHS Trust's chief executive, Bob Allen, said he could not understand the scepticism.

He said: "The figures are public knowledge and I keep repeating to both councils that this whole story began last May when we opened our books at our public board meeting, as we are required to do each year.

"That indicated why we needed to make the savings and where from. The Trust as a whole is overspending and in our discussions in May we explained how we would make savings at the Ilkley hospital and could make other savings at Bingley and Skipton hospitals.

"If the parish council wishes to see our books they can do so but on February 4 at the Airedale PCT board meeting where they are aiming to have the launch of the consultation papers anyway, when all the interested parties will have a chance to see them and to put any questions."

Mr Godward told councillors the consultation process must run for three months, during which time the CHC would be insisting that full services continued to be provided in Ilkley.

He added that the CHC would appeal against any decision to move services at the highest level - and believed it could succeed.

He said: "During the consultation period the Trust may not run down or remove services before the final decision is made. If the conclusion of the proposals was to stop services the CHC would take it to the Secretary of State and I think he would say the services must continue."

Fearing the proposed disbanding of the CHC at such a critical time, parish council chairman Mike Gibbons said: "More than 10,000 people signed the petition against the loss of services and those people need representing."

Stressing that the CHC was not against modernisation, Mr Godward said it had welcomed the upgrading of the Coronation Hospital in 1995, and the installation of a new state-of-the-art X-ray machine in 2001.

But that made it all the more baffling that Airedale NHS Trust was now considering closing those services down.