Airedale Hospital's medical director has warned members of the trust board that care levels will suffer unless more doctors are employed.

Dr Paul Godwin said consultants are already breaching the European Union's Working Time Directive by working more hours than they are contracted for.

And he is concerned about how the trust will fund a potential increase in the number of locum doctors needed to cover consultants who don't want to work over their allotted hours.

Dr Godwin said: "A large number of consultants do breach the Working Time Directive and I know of people who work far more than the 35 hours they are contracted for.

"There aren't enough consultants across the county to fill gaps in the Working Time Directive.

"It is one thing to introduce legislation and another to work out how you are going to apply it.

"The trust should be aware that we are working with the bare minimum of people. We want to provide quality of care but we do need to employ higher staff levels."

Director of finance Janet Crouch said that since the introduction of the Working Time Directive last year, the trust had received extra government cash to pay for holiday entitlements, but not for bringing in extra staff.

Mrs Crouch says the trust is still waiting to see if the Regional Office will approve its plan for a capital to revenue transfer to finance the £750,000 that will ensure the trust does not run a deficit budget.

In addition Mrs Crouch said the trust was showing an expenditure overspend at the end of May of around £5,000.

She said: "The overspend is largely down to locum costs in surgery and medicine and we've also been putting on additional waiting list sessions to keep up with waiting list targets to ensure we have no 12 month waiters.

"Our targets are not just at the end of the year. We have to hit them each quarter as funding depends on us hitting our quarterly targets.

"Although we are facing an overspend I think it will be recovered over the rest of the year."

In contrast, the trust is facing an under spend in its non-pay budgets with its estates directorate £82,000 below budgeted levels.

This is in spite of an overspend of £21,000 with the drugs budget and £28,000 overspend in pathology which supplies blood and blood products across the group. Income from private patients using the Catheter laboratory is below expected levels with competition from other labs one possible explanation.

Airedale Hospital is planning a big thank you to all the volunteers who have helped it since it opened its doors in 1970.

It is hosting the Black Dyke Mills band on August 27 as part of an open air songs of praise to thank the Friends of Airedale for its stalwart support over the last 30 years.

Friends of Airedale has seen its numbers grow to just under 400 volunteers, who provide a variety of services around the hospital and help to fundraise for new equipment.

Director of nursing and quality Sue Franks said: "In some areas of Britain attracting volunteers is very difficult but we have well above the average number of volunteers.

"They give us their time freely and add to the quality of care given and raise a lot of money that has been ploughed into Airedale and has provided us with expensive pieces of equipment.

"We would like to say a big thank you to these people and help them to celebrate their 30th birthday alongside our own."

Mrs Franks said the dedication of the group was outlined by the fact that 13 people have been working as volunteers at the hospital since it opened.

Airedale is in the top 15 per cent of NHS trusts across the country in terms of active volunteers and hours donated. The average number of volunteers is 140.

All established and new volunteer roles at Airedale are accompanied by detailed guidelines and training.

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