In this paper, we study an approach for recovery of an improved stress resultant ÿeld for plate bending problems, which then is used for a posteriori error estimation of the ÿnite element solution. The new recovery procedure can be classiÿed as Superconvergent Patch Recovery (SPR) enhanced with approximate satisfaction of interior equilibrium and natural boundary conditions. The interior equilibrium is satisÿed a priori over each nodal patch by selecting polynomial basis functions that fulÿl the point-wise equilibrium equations. The natural boundary conditions are accounted for in a discrete least-squares manner. The performance of the developed recovery procedure is illustrated by analysing two plate bending problems with known analytical solutions. Compared to the original SPR-method, which usually underestimates the true error, the present approach gives a more conservative error estimate.