LEEDS Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust requires improvement, an inspection has found.

England's Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, has published his first report on the quality of care provided by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

Inspectors conclude that the trust’s two main hospitals, Leeds General Infirmary, and St James’s University Hospital both require improvement.

The hospitals were inspected by the Care Quality Commission in March under its new inspection regime. The inspection team which included doctors, nurses, midwives, hospital managers, trained members of the public, a variety of specialists, CQC inspectors and analysts spent four days at the trust in March. Inspectors also returned unannounced.

Overall, inspectors found that safety needed to improve. The trust has been told that it must make improvements in 15 areas including ensuring that all staff report incidents and that learning, including feedback from serious incident investigations, is disseminated across all clinical areas, departments and hospitals.

The inspection team identified nine areas of outstanding practice including that geriatricians had worked with the community and the A&E department to try to help avoid unnecessary admissions in the elderly population.