Ilkley'S Coronation Hospital site will be sold off to a firm in a private finance deal amid a growing cash shortfall, health chiefs have confirmed.

Hospital owner Airedale Primary Care Trust (PCT) this week confirmed the Springs Lane hospital site sale to the Benchmark company at the same meeting where it revealed that it was serious about setting up a full NHS dental suite at the replacement hospital building.

Benchmark is then expected to build a new 'Health Care Centre' housing current hospital services and additional services, which the PCT will lease.

At its board meeting held in public on Tuesday, the PCT told how progress with the hospital's sale had been held up by legal hurdles, but now two plans for the new building were on the cards.

During last year's public consultation and pre-consultation meetings, some Ilkley people spoke out against selling off the site of the 100-year-old hospital outright, as it was originally given to health authorities by townspeople for the provision of a hospital.

And at the PCT meeting on Tuesday, non-executive director Vaughan Bruce, himself an Ilkley resident, voiced his concerns about the PCT losing out on something that would gain value as time went on. He suggested they did not sell the site.

"I can't see why we can't lease it instead," said Mr Bruce.

And acting human resources director Lorraine Wardle said the PCT would be going back on what had been agreed at public consultations.

Ilkley Parish councillor Mike Gibbons, leader of the town's Coronation Hospital campaign group, said the PCT had previously spoken of selling off just part of the site.

"I think that obviously the people of Ilkley would only agree to the site being sold if it's going to be of advantage to them in terms of a replacement hospital, and a satisfactory guarantee that the facility would continue to exist and function in the long term," he said.

The PCT's corporate development director, David Riley, told the PCT meeting two plans would be drawn up for the Health Care Centre - one featuring underground car parking in attempt to solve the lack of parking space in the area for both staff and patients.

But the PCT is keen to get moving with the site's sale.

Deputy chief executive, Lyn Wilkinson, said: "We will have a severe problem in terms of our finances if we don't sell it. If we keep that building it will be a capital burden to us."

The PCT's 2004-2005 budget framework indicates the trust will have an unresolved deficit almost twice the size of the equivalent cash shortfall for 2003-2004.

Councillor Gibbons told the parish council on Monday that campaigners' own meetings with a PCT officer had revealed the dental suite was now a certainty. The trust, which had already been considering adding NHS dental care to facilities at the Coronation Hospital's replacement, has taken into account Ilkley's growing NHS dental care crisis.

Two dental practices in Ilkley, one of them treating thousands of people, recently made the decision to go private amid Government health service changes.

A spokesperson for the PCT told the Gazette: "The plans for Coronation Hospital are obviously still at an early stage, but Airedale PCT is committed to providing an NHS dentistry service on the site. We are working closely with the architects to include designs for a dental suite in the plans."

Coun Gibbons also believes the PCT could come up with fuller plans for its replacement hospital site shortly - and may send a representative to the July Ilkley Parish Council meeting to give town leaders an update.

Discussions with the PCT had also revealed that the rest of the Coronation Hospital site might go for 'health uses', said Coun Gibbons, rather than business or housing developments.