THURROCK'S lead councillor for health and wellbeing has delivered a critical message about standards at Basildon Hospital following a report from its chief nursing officer in the wake of a damning verdict by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on some of its services.

Stanford and Corringham Cllr Shane Ralph is chair of the borough's health and wellbeing overview and scrutiny committee which was recently addressed by the hospital trust's Diane Sarkar, who gave feedback on the commission's latest report on the three major hospitals run by the trust.

They include Basildon Hospital.

The CQC carried out an unannounced inspection of Basildon, and the other hospitals in Southend and Chelmsford (Broomfield) in July and August last year. The inspection included an evaluation of all of the medical core service at Basildon and maternity and surgery provision on all three sites.

Ms Sarkar told members of the committee: "They rated the trust overall, all three sites, as requires improvement. It's pleasing to note that the inadequate we had for maternity services was removed. That was good recognition of all the hard work the staff had put in."

Following the inspection, the rating for Basildon maternity unit was 'requires improvement'.

Across the trust areas for improvement focused on checking compliance of equipment and record keeping.

Ms Sakar said: "None of the areas of improvement were a surprise to us. Some of them were frustrating for us because they were around things that hadn't been checked 100 per cent of the time. They are things that we monitor routinely and we know we haven't always got 100 per cent compliance, which is somewhat frustrating."

Cllr Ralph said the CQC findings were disappointing. He added: "When it comes to maternity we have been here twice before and I was hoping to see a better improvement. It's still the same things, lack of communication in handovers, staff report errors.

"Those have come up again and again and I just feel lessons haven't been learnt. That's what I found disappointing and then to read about basic procedures where machines weren't being checked I find that very disturbing."