The outstanding rating was awarded to Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust following an inspection in May.

Chief executive, Professor Mel Pickup, said: ‘The Neonatal Unit provides a unique and specialist service to babies, mothers and families at what is often an extremely worrying and emotional time. I'm very proud that the CQC found the team to be committed to treating patients and those close to them with compassion and kindness.'

The service includes a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), one of only four NICUs in the Yorkshire and Humber region which cares for some of the sickest and most premature babies.

The CQC also inspected the trust's maternity services and medical care, including older people's care, at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI).

While the CQC's overall requires improvement rating for maternity services remained the same as the inspection only looked at two areas, there were improvements to the well-led and safe domains, resulting in good ratings.

Medical care at BRI maintained its good rating. Inspectors found medical care was safe and well-led and regularly received positive feedback from patients.

Prof Pickup added: ‘The maternity services improvements are a credit to colleagues working in this area. These, together with the outstanding rating for our neonatal services are a clear indication of our trajectory of improvement.

‘I'm pleased that the CQC has recognised our medical care as good and well-led with patients receiving compassionate care and treatment from our dedicated and committed colleagues. These are strong foundations for further improvement to deliver even better quality care.

‘While our outstanding neonatal rating and improvements in other services are great news for patients, colleagues and communities, this is not about standing still. There will always be areas we need to focus on to improve service users and carers' experience of our services and we will work tirelessly to do this.'