Health bosses at a top rated hospital have taken action to reduce the more-than-a-year-long waiting time for patients needing scans.

Airedale NHS trust is to double the number of MRI sessions at Airedale Hospital, Steeton, from three half-days to three full days.

Use of the X-ray CT scan is also to be increased by a third with three extra evening sessions.

The trust is also recruiting another radiographer to deal with the workload. The increased sessions in the £2.6 million X-ray department will start in mid-November.

But the trust still has not enough cash to have the state of the art machines operating all week.

At present patients have to wait between 56 and 60 weeks for a routine CT scan and up to 63 weeks for a routine MRI session.

Urgent cases for MRI and CT wait between two and three weeks.

The improvements are being financed with £100,000 from Airedale Primary Care Trust.

And £40,000 has been provided from the Yorkshire Cancer Network.

Talks are due to be held with Craven, Harrogate and Rural District Primary Care Trust about supplying extra funding.

Janet Crouch (pictured) Airedale NHS Trust's chief executive, said: "There is still room for further improvement and it is disappointing that not all our patients will benefit from these reduced waiting times.

"Craven, Harrogate and Rural District Primary Care Trust has not yet contributed, creating a differential in treating patients according to area."

Bill Redlin, of CH&RD primary care trust, said it had been agreed in principle to provide more funding to ensure people from Craven could be treated more quickly.

But they had been waiting four weeks for waiting time information from Airedale.

"We have yet to receive this information but we are meeting with them again next week. Once they supply us with the information we can decide what extra investment to put into this important service," he said.

Airedale NHS Trust received the top three star performance rating from the Government in July.