Olympic inspectors said yesterday that Beijing “looked ready” for the Games next month despite lingering concerns about restrictions on foreign journalists and air pollution.

The IOC hailed the preparations as “a gold standard for the future”, setting the bar high for the London 2012 organisers.

A month before the opening ceremony on August 8, Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC’s co-ordination commission, praised the readiness of the 31 completed venues. However, he issued a veiled warning that the organisers must live up to the promises made when they won the Games in 2001, including unfettered access for international media and an improvement in human rights in China.

“What our hosts have achieved is exceptional,” he said. “For the Games to be an overriding success — and the IOC has an underlying confidence this will unquestionably be the case — the organisers need now to deliver the services pledged for the various stakeholders who have begun to arrive for the Games.”

Those finding working conditions less than ideal include overseas television crews enduring daily battles with local bureaucrats and security officials. Beijing will receive about 20,000 accredited journalists, who are technically free to roam, but early arrivals are encountering what they see as obstructive form-filling exercises.

Beijing organisers will meet international broadcasters today to resolve issues including the use of iconic backdrops such as Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City for live shots.

Verbruggen also said that the IOC was keen to know whether temporary measures to clear pollution would work. The Chinese authorities are issuing orders for increasing numbers of factories in industrial areas around Beijing to close for the period of the Games.

The Beijing organisers are acutely aware of the heavy pollution that blankets the city for much of the year and have begun implementing tougher rules and factory closures further and further from the capital to try to clean up the air in time. Some 267 companies near Beijing were due to close yesterday until the end of the Games in order to improve the quality of the air, which tests by the BBC found failed to meet the guidelines for quality as laid out by the World Health Organisation on six days out of seven.

From July 1 300,000 highly polluting vehicles were banned from the capital. Many government offices have already been ordered to pull their cars off the roads. From July 20, private cars - of which there are more than 3 million - will be banned on alternate days according to whether they have odd or even-numbered registration plates.