Health watchdogs were encouraged by the performance of Bradford's casualty department on one of the busiest days of the year.

The accident and emergency department at the Bradford Royal Infirmary - one of the busiest in the country - was put under the spotlight by members of the Bradford Community Health Council.

They were taking part in Nationwide Casualty Watch 2000 - a national survey of the state of Britain's overstretched casualty departments.

Lesley Sterling-Baxter, chief officer of the Bradford CHC, visited the BRI at 4.30pm yesterday for a snapshot survey of how services were coping.

"There were 36 people there, including six children," she said.

"The person who had been there the longest was someone with a dislocated shoulder who had been there since 1pm. He had had two x-rays so he was not waiting for treatment."

Nationally there has been concern about shortage of beds - and last night in Bradford, six people were temporarily waiting on trolleys, in readiness for hospital admission.

"Some were waiting for beds to become available, but the longest anyone had been waiting was two hours," Mrs Sterling-Baxter added. But she said she wasn't concerned about the trolley waits.

"Compared to last year when we did the same exercise, people this year were not having to wait quite so long.

"It was very slick and I was impressed. This is the time of year that hospitals are busiest and beds are full."

Today's report follows checks carried out in casualty units nationally before Christmas at the height of the flu outbreak revealed a catalogue of failures, with at least one seriously ill elderly patient allegedly being left on a trolley for two days.

The 71-year-old woman with angina was claimed to have been left waiting for treatment at a hospital in Surrey for 49 hours - despite Government guidelines which say no-one should be left on a trolley for more than four hours.

Casualty chiefs reported some units were so busy that patients had to sit on the floor while waiting for treatment, while one hospital had to use its boardroom as an overflow facility.

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