The trust is looking to cut costs as it faces ending the financial year with a half million pound deficit.

Health chiefs at Airedale Primary Care Trust are tightening up expenditure on drugs and the number of operations the trust commissions, to avoid exceeding a projected overspend of £474,000.

The trust, which is responsible for GP practices in Keighley and commissioning of hospital services, says it is in the red mainly due to increased spending in drugs to keep in line with prescribing recommendations made by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Health chiefs say that the level of cholesterol lowering drugs, statins, prescribed by GPs, has exceeded predicted levels.

They are also keeping a tight rein on GP referrals for surgery, particularly in areas such as plastic surgery, to minimise any deficit.

In addition the trust has to repay £992,000 it brokered in the last financial year, which enabled it to record a surplus of £458,000.

Director of finance Neil Fell said: "The Strategic Health Authority requires us to balance our books by the end of the year, so we are curtailing as much expenditure as we can.

"The main reason for the overspend is due to prescribing.

"We took a calculated risk about budget levels, but a number of things like statins turned out not to be quite right.

"In some cases expenditure is still increasing.

"Pronouncements from NICE on drugs that need to be used have put further pressure on the prescribing budget.

"At this stage we have a chance of coming in on line.

"It is not just a case of eliminating extravagance and waste, we have got to manage the budget and be even more efficient."

Mr Fell added that the GP prescribing budget had increased by 15 per cent on last year.

Although early forecasts suggested this would lead to an overspend on the GP prescribing budget of £1.6million, the trust is hoping to contain the figure to £1.1million.