Council chiefs will get an update next week on how bosses at Bradford Royal Infimary are dealing with problems raised in a critical health watchdog report.

Members of Bradford Council’s health and social care overview and scrutiny committee will hear on Thursday how Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been taking steps to meet staffing targets set in the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) warning notice.

They will also hear how a number of nursing vacancies are being filled by newly-qualified nurses from the University of Bradford.

BRI was inspected by the Care Quality Commission in September and October last year and its bosses were subsequently told they needed to recruit more staff. The foundation trust, which runs the hospital, had until last month to conform to the CQC’s warning notice, which said improvements must be made to meet national standards of quality and safety. The CQC’s inspection report said the Trust failed to meet national standards in four of six areas looked at, including respecting and involving people who use services, the care and welfare of people who use services and assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision.

BRI was found to meet standards for dealing with complaints and the management of medicine.

But it was staffing problems that were the most significant findings with shortages across a number of wards and departments, particularly in the Accident and Emergency Department.

According to the Trust it was already working on improving staffing levels before the CQC’s surprise visits and new systems have now been implemented to track staffing levels. A recruitment drive will be on-going to fill vacant and newly-established posts.

Next week’s meeting will hear that as part of the recruitment drive four new Accident and Emergency consultants have also been appointed and are due to start this month, which should mean the department will then have a consultant working clinically in that unit from 8am to midnight every day of the year.

Although the number of posts vacant in the Trust is consistently changing, the scrutiny committee will hear the latest overall vacancy rate is three per cent of the nursing workforce.