Ilkley'S Coronation Hospital could be 'reduced to rubble' unless the whole community gets behind the renewed drive to save local hospital services, it is claimed.

Leader of the campaign and Ilkley Parish Council chairman, Councillor Mike Gibbons, told fellow councillors this week that the group must intensify its action to get a replacement Health Care Centre built.

He last week called upon local health professionals to join campaigners in putting pressure on the main health trusts responsible for the Springs Lane hospital and its services. Now he has repeated his call to arms to colleagues on Ilkley Parish Council,

"It's our intention to intensify out action," Coun Gibbons told Monday's parish council meeting. "We must continue the fight wherever possible."

He told councillors he feared the intention of health chiefs was still to reduce the Coronation Hospital to rubble - whether or not a new base was set up in town to house the remaining services. The hospital's future was threatened in 2002, amid problems with a large financial deficit for the then owner, Airedale NHS Trust. Airedale Primary Care Trust (PCT) took over the site and carried out a lengthy public consultation in Wharfedale, which concluded that keep all services local in a new centre was the preferred option.

Despite pledges to pursue this option, selling the land in a private finance deal which would see the new centre built by a developer and leased back by the trust, several services have since been lost.

Among these were gynaecology clinics, a cardiac outpatient clinic and the Minor Injuries Unit - one of the services which there was strong support for during the public consultation.

The PCT hoped to have the land sold off to the developer by Christmas last year. This was held up during a legal wrangle between the trust and governors of Ilkley Grammar School over a covenant limiting what could be built.

It was hoped earlier this year that the issue was nearing an end, until it emerged that national changes to the NHS funding structure could take the project out of the PCT's hands. The PCT continues to pledge it support for the creation of a new Health Care Centre, but the decision over the future of services may be in the hands of a collective of Wharfedale GPs, under the Practice Based Commissioning scheme.