Hospital bosses in Bradford have started the process to join the UK's super league of health care.

A dossier showing the strengths of Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke's Hospital has gone to the Department of Health which is drawing up a list of hospitals which will get foundation status.

Only the best hospitals in the country - those with a three-star Government rating like Bradford's - can apply. A preliminary bid had to be made by the end of February.

If granted it means Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust, which runs the hospitals, will be allowed more control of its affairs rather than be answerable to Department of Health - but it will remain part of the NHS.

A key benefit is more freedom of operation and included in this is the ability to borrow money from the public and private sector. But health bosses in Bradford stress they will only press ahead if the community wants them to.

David Jackson, the trust's chief executive, said: "The litmus test for whether we forge ahead is if becoming a trust would help us deliver a better service to the people of Bradford.

"The extra freedoms of becoming a foundation are undoubtedly attractive. They must be used to deliver real benefits to our patients.

"Before embarking on a full bid we are determined to listen to the views of the local community we serve."

Health chiefs plan to visit organisation such as co-operatives and building societies to find out how the system - which operates in hospitals in Denmark, Spain and Sweden - works.

In the bid so far the hospital had to outline its excellence in six key areas including responses to patients, quality of care, leadership and management, commitment and support to staff, finance and partnership working.

But some critics - including former Health Secretary Frank Dobson - have argued the foundation hospitals will create a two-tier NHS. About a dozen hospitals in the country are expected to gain foundation status. Their names are expected to be announced in autumn and they will be up and running by spring 2004.