The NHS foundation trust responsible for running the Addenbrooke’s Hospital will no longer be rated as “inadequate”, a re-inspection has ruled.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) last week announced that both hospitals will now be deemed as “requiring improvement”, following a visit from inspectors in February.

The Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Mike Richards, said: “We found improvement in each area we inspected compared to our previous inspection in April 2015.

“This inspection was to gain assurance that Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had taken action to address our most serious concerns identified at our inspection of April 2015 and was not to determine if the Trust should be removed from special measures”.

He also announced that there will be a full follow-up inspection in September.

The Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) Trust was initially put under special measures in September last year after the CQC identified a number of concerns pertaining to surgery, maternity and gynaecology, and outpatients and diagnostic imaging services in the course of an inspection in April 2015.

The inspections last year also found that problems in recruiting sufficient numbers of staff and the rising demand for care meant that planned operations were often cancelled and the maternity unit was often forced to close.

Other areas of concern were the lengthy outpatient waiting times, the unsafe level of nitrous oxide in delivery suites, and inadequate medicines management.

The critical report came as a shock to the medical community at large as Addenbrooke’s has long been looked upon as a beacon of high-quality care.

Among the recent improvements in the Trust are the increased number of midwives and better maternity governance, with maternity staff being told to ensure they properly record and respond to early neonatal warning signs.

There have also been told to remain alert of their responsibilities under the NHS’s “duty of candour”, a legal duty which requires hospitals and other health trust to provide transparent, accurate and truthful information to patients, and to apologise when mistakes are made.

The Chair of the Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) Trust, Jane Ramsey, welcomed the news, saying: “I would like to thank the many staff who have contributed to the improvement in our services for our patients. We are determined that this improvement will continue over the coming months”.

CUH Chief Executive, Roland Sinker, who took over from his predecessor Dr Keith McNeil – who resigned a week before the report branding the Trust “inadequate” was made public – also welcomed the news while also highlighting the need to continue making improvements into the future.

“Despite our good process so far, we recognise that this improvement is the first step in a much longer journey for the Trust. We will keep our focus on delivering our improvement plan and delivering the longer term improvements in our culture and governance arrangements.”

He added: “The Trust still has a long way to go, but we are proud of what has been achieved in a short time”.

The Trust was also recently attracted unwanted attention when its finances were investigated after a £200 million online patient record system was rolled out. When Dr McNeil, the Trust’s then Chief Executive, and Paul James, the Chief Finance Officer resigned last September, Addenbrooke’s was running a deficit of £1.2 million a week.

At a CUH board meeting two weeks ago, the Trust was just over £20 million more in debt than it had budgeted for with a deficit of £84.3 million.

The Interim Chief Finance Officer, Ian Alexander, put this down primarily to fines which were levied when the Trust was not hitting performance targets and the collapse of Cambridgeshire’s older people’s care contract.

“The financial position has stabilised month by month”, said Alexander. “It’s not going to get any worse. We’ve budgeted for a deficit next year of £74 million, that’s predicted on the delivery of £49 million Cost Improvement Programme (CIP).”

However, hospital finances issues are not just a Cambridge problem – earlier this year, the King’s Fund, a leading health think tank, said NHS trusts in England were on course to be £2.3 billion in the red by the end of the financial year.