Northern Care Alliance NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Oldham Hospital, has received another negative inspection report. The Care Quality Commission (CQC), the healthcare watchdog, visited surgical services at Salford Royal Hospital and again rated them requires improvement.

Inspectors found 12 breaches of legal regulations, including on safe care and treatment, governance and staffing. The report follows a warning notice issued to the trust in October 2025. Inspectors said improvements made since then mean the service is now considered to be complying with that notice.

The trust also runs Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield Hospital in Bury. It is involved in industrial action and has faced criticism after its own board papers revealed dozens of patients died or came to harm because of treatment delays and serious errors made by staff working under extreme pressure.

Surgical services are still short of staff and employee confidence is low, the CQC found. Cancelled care remains a concern. Some 501 operations were cancelled for non-clinical reasons on the day of surgery between September 2025 and May 2026. The most frequent reasons included list overruns due to the complexity of procedures (115) and unavailable ward beds (105).

Staff said pre-operative assessments were sometimes unavailable or incomplete, leading to delays and cancellations, and a reduction in pre-operative staff increased the number of delays. Some 79 incidents were reported between September 2025 and May 2026 related to staff shortages, most of them because of cancelled non-emergency procedures.

Some staff reported issues around bullying and harassment, spoke negatively about the support they received from line managers, and said they still felt reluctant to raise concerns because they feared these would be dismissed or lead to punitive action from senior leaders. Additional concerns were raised over staff training, with gaps in life support training compliance and just 12.8pc of staff completing dementia training.

There had been no significant improvement in patient length of stay, readmissions following surgery or discharge processes, the report said. A reduced number of violent or aggressive incidents towards staff by patients had been reported following implementation of a new collaborative. Patients and relatives spoke positively about staff, however. People said they felt comfortable asking for help and said they responded promptly.

Karen Coverley, deputy chief nursing officer at Northern Care Alliance, said the trust was pleased the CQC had found improvements and had rated the service good for caring.

She said the CQC noted the trust had sufficiently met the requirements of the warning notice issued to it and had made progress in areas including staffing arrangements on wards, safeguarding, patient safety processes, surgical safety compliance and the management of deteriorating patients. She said the safety and quality of care for patients remained its absolute priority and the trust would keep its full focus on the improvement it knew it still needed to do.

She added that the inspection took place less than two months after the introduction of a new clinically led operating model. She said that while progress had been made, some of the changes needed were significant and would take time to fully embed across the organisation.

Other Greater Manchester services inspected recently included Middleton Health Centre in Limetrees Road, which received the week's only outstanding rating. Inspectors praised the GP for its proactive and positive culture of safety and said it acted to support people who might not be engaging with healthcare services. This included home visits to understand barriers people faced and to build trusting relationships, as well as groups such as a weight management group and an alcohol and substance misuse support group.

Apollo Care Central Manchester, a homecare support service in Ardwick, was rated good. The CQC noted that it always treated people with kindness and compassion and worked closely with families to ensure care reflected what mattered most to the person. Service users and their relatives felt they were listened to, supported safely and confident staff understood how to protect them from harm.

Newbury Green Medical Practice, in Rigby Street, was another service to receive a good rating. The GP was judged to offer safe care in a visibly clean environment. It actively supported patients to improve their health through community-based initiatives. Around 200 referrals had been made and these contributed positively to patient outcomes, including supporting a homeless person to secure stable accommodation. Around 92pc of patients responding to a national survey felt staff were good at treating them with care and concern. Two patients told inspectors the service always treated patients with kindness, compassion and dignity. However, there were gaps in training and recruitment documents for some staff, including basic life support training and incomplete identity checks.

My Recovery Tameside, in Ashton-under-Lyne, was also rated good for its community-based substance misuse services. The setting created spaces where people could be themselves and speak openly about their challenges and successes, inspectors noted. People said staff were knowledgeable and went above and beyond, including supporting them with other agencies they were involved with, such as housing and social care. When people disengaged unexpectedly from the service, policies were in place to ensure staff made every effort to bring them back. Staff were safely recruited, most training was up to date and there were no hygiene or health and safety issues at the premises.