Airedale Hospital is to stop serving "fancy food" to patients as part of a cost cutting drive.

Health chiefs are axing the Better Hospital Food programme introduced by the Government earlier this year, which includes a national menu devised by TV food critic Lloyd Grossman.

But they are keeping house keepers on three wards which were included as part of the scheme.

Director of planning and marketing Doug Farrow said: "The difficulty is that the resource implications are significant and we need to decide to do nothing or steer a middle course.

"In view of the whole year financially I don't think we can take the financial risk to implement the Better Hospital Food programme.

"Equally, I don't think we can do nothing and I recommend we steer a middle course and go for a part option that doesn't cost us any money other than retaining the house keepers on Wards 3,4 and 8, which would be an extra £88,000 next year. We already had some ward house keepers with money we have been allocated and we've agreed to extend it because it's been so successful.

"We would like to roll it out to the whole hospital but we need extra resources to do that."

Mr Farrow added that the hospital would be able to maintain its high catering standards for patients without sticking to the Government recommendations.

If the trust can find any extra cash he said it might be able to provide some aspects of the better food programme.

Director of nursing and quality, Sue Franks, said: "We have a rolling programme to gauge patient satisfaction and the only time we had a dip was when we introduced the new menus of 'fancy food' as people called it. We have always maintained a high satisfaction rating."

She said many were of the opinion that the new menus did not provide the right diet for people in hospital.

The better food programme was introduced by the Government as part of its NHS Plan and contains four key elements:

* A 24-hour service which includes a ward kitchen service, snack box provision and light bites

* A national menu including a continental style breakfast, snacks twice daily and introduction of chefs dishes

* NHS menu booklets using a new menu format

* Introduction of ward housekeepers.