East Cheshire NHS Trust has responded to a damning report published by the Care Quality Commission following inspections carried out at Macclesfield Hospital last year.

It stated that both the medical services and urgent and emergency services were in need of improvement.

Ged Murphy, the trust's chief executive officer, says they are 'committed' to making 'sustainable improvements'.

He said: "We welcome the reports from the CQC, which will play a valuable part in helping us make important improvements to the services we provide to our patients.

"We are pleased to see that our maternity services retained their rating of 'good'. At the same time, we recognise that there is further work to be done to improve our medical and urgent and emergency services which have been rated as 'requires improvement', although the CQC described colleagues in these services as 'kind and compassionate staff working hard in medical and urgent and emergency services'.

"Our focus remains on addressing some long-standing challenges and we are committed to supporting our teams to ensure that the actions we take lead to sustainable improvements in our services.

"Our priority is to continue to deliver the highest standards of quality care with continued dedication from our staff together with the involvement of patients, families and carers."

You can read more about the CQC report here.