Family doctors across the country will be offered up to £650 to work for three hours on Easter Saturday in a bid to reduce strain on hospitals over the bank holiday weekend. Surgeries in Essex, the West Midlands and London are being offered cash incentives to open during the four-day break. Doctors could be paid up to £650 for just three hours work on Easter Saturday - which includes £150 an hour plus £200 for administrative costs. The incentive is being offered to ensure there is enough cover over the four day Easter holiday - in a similar way to when doctors were persuaded to work on New Year's Day by being offered £80 an hour on top of their normal salary. Doctors are being offered up to £650 to work for three hours on Easter Saturday to ensure there is cover . GPs in Essex, the West Midlands and some London boroughs will be offered the incentive payments. The offer is only being made to those practices that are not already part of the directed enhanced service scheme - an agreement which sees GPs offered an annual payment for increasing cover at weekends. The bonus payments are being offered to cover patients with urgent care needs and will also be paid for doctors to carry out home visits, the Daily Express reported. Earlier this month GPs in the West Midlands criticised the £350 figure and said it needed to be quadrupled for them to consider working over the Easter break. However the offer has now been extended to include London and Essex, as well as in some parts of the north. A spokeswoman from NHS England, for London, confirmed GPs had been offered £650 for the extra hours work. She said the deal, along with the practices that had already signed up to directed enhanced services, meant that around 84 per cent of people would be able to access their GP over the weekend. She said: 'Across London, most boroughs are able to offer access to primary care services on Easter Saturday. GP practices that do not normally offer weekend cover  under the directed enhanced services scheme will be offered the payments . 'For the small number not achieving this level of coverage, we are working with local Clinical Commissioning Groups and will be offering an additional payment called a Local Enhanced Service to cover the costs. 'While the price has yet to be finalised it is likely to be around £650 for a three hour session in line with other areas in England. 'Our estimates show that 84 percent of people in London will be able to access GP services on Easter Saturday. We are determining additional requirements in a small number of boroughs.' The payment being offered is similar to that over New Year, when doctors were offered £80 an hour on top of their normal salary to work on New Year's Day. In the North and East some incentives will be offered, but these areas are understood to have greater cover over weekends. A memo from Barbara Hawkin, NHS deputy chief executive, was sent to trusts and groups of GPs saying there was a need to come up with plans to ensure there was enough cover over Easter. Incentive payments have been offered to cover weekends and bank holidays following Labour's 2004 renegotiation of their contracts. Under this agreement GPs were allowed to hand responsibility for out-of-hours care to private firms.
Doctors are to be offered cash incentives to work over the Easter holidays . Offer will be to pay up to £650 for three hours work on Easter Saturday . Surgeries in Essex, West Midlands and London will be offered payments . Officials in London said 84 per cent of patients will be able to access a GP . In the North and East some incentives will be given for extra opening hours .