A long-serving member of staff at Bradford Royal Infirmary collected her MBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace.

Pat Connell, of Cottingley, is a healthcare assistant for Bradford Teaching Hospitals and had worked at the BRI for 24 years. Mrs Connell was given the honour for services to the NHS. She was nominated by senior sisters, Jane Palmer and Sonya Tetley, who described her as an “inspirational role model”.

Mrs Connell said it was “wonderful to get the opportunity to go behind the scenes at Buckingham Palace. “I never, in a million years, imagined that i would ever get something like an MBE,” she said.

She was accompanied by her husband Michael, sons Stephen and Christopher, Christopher’s girlfriend Carley and grand-daughter Chloe, nine.