The sale of a former mental health hospital has provided Airedale NHS Trust with an £8million windfall.

Members of the Airedale NHS Trust Board were told the sale of Scalebor Park Hospital at Burley-in-Wharfedale can now go ahead after planning permission was granted for a housing development on the site.

The sale of the site at Moor Lane will recoup in the region of £10 million, £2 million of which will go to the regional office.

However Director of Finance and Information Janet Crouch warned that the cash would only be available for capital projects such as buildings or equipment and would not cover running costs.

Mrs Crouch told members of the board that the money would come in bit by bit, not in one lump sum, and that regional health service bosses would have to approve any expenditure.

Any schemes the trust proposed with a value of more than £600,000 were also likely to be tested under the Private Finance Initiative scheme to see whether they could be developed using private cash.

After a long running saga surrounding the use of the Scalebor site, including a public inquiry, Burley Developments Limited received the go-ahead to develop 145 new homes on the site in July when Shipley planning committee approved the scheme.

The company will build 120 houses on the site and convert the existing hospital buildings into a further 20 homes as well as extending the lodge house.

The site was put on the market by Airedale NHS Trust in 1995 as the health service replaced its traditional large institutions with smaller community based mental health facilities.

An outline proposal for 142 homes on the site was turned down in 1997 as it was felt the nature of the development would not be visually sympathetic to the surrounding green belt area.

Planning officials say this new proposal avoids the shortcomings of the previous application, providing a scheme that blends in with the character of existing buildings.

Opened at the turn of the century, Scalebor Park was at the forefront of developments in mental health care and was a training centre for psychiatric nurses.