David Adam, a non-executive director of Airedale NHS Trust, said he felt more needed to be done to spend the million pounds currently in the hospital’s charitable fund.

He asked whether there was a problem with the trust not nominating enough projects requiring money from this source.

“We don’t want the charity to have a million sat in the bank account just for the sake of it,” he said. Sally Houghton, who chairs the fund’s sub-committee, said she and her colleagues were aware of the issue and were encouraging people to submit ideas on how the cash could be spent.

“People give us this money to spend — they don’t give it to us to sit on,” she said.

“But we’re still in the early stages as a committee.”