DOCTORS could almost double their salaries if they agree to work evenings and weekends.

The Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust is planning to offer a six figure salary to GPs to work out of hours.

From next year GPs can opt out of the responsibility of providing out of hours cover and it will be the trust's responsibility.

At the moment GPs earn, on average, £60,000 but under the trust's proposals they could earn £100,000.

The trust is proposing to offer £100,000 each for two GPs to work full time out of hours and cover its area.

The trust believes, however, that there could be more than two GPs interested in doing the work and the funding would be shared between them.

Dr Simon Burrell, a Corsham GP who represents family doctors on the trust board, said a salary of £100,000 was not out of the ordinary.

"It is the market rate," he said. "In London for example GPs are being paid £140,000 just to do out of hours work."

The trust is due to take over the responsibility of arranging GP cover for out of hours from December 31 2004.

GPs will have the power to opt out of providing out of hours care when a new national GP contract comes into force next year.

A survey by the trust carried out in February this year, and before the new GP contract was voted on by family doctors, found that 70 per cent of the 109 GPs in the area wanted to stop working nights and the majority of them wanted to opt out of all out of hours work, including weekends.

GPs who do opt out will lose an average of £6,000 a year, which will go to the trust to fund out of hours services.

The trust estimates the cost of providing an out of hours service will be £1.1million and there could be a shortfall of £224,883 in 2004/05.

The cost of the service also includes £45,000, which the trust plans to spend on employing drivers for the GPs who it pays to provide out of hours cover.

Dr Burrell said GPs were working harder and longer hours which is why many of them do not want to work nights.

He is part of the Chippenham GP co-operative and on average each GP works one night a month.

Dr Burrell said: "Daytime work is getting a lot harder and GPs cannot do the job in the daytime, evenings and weekends as easily as they used to be able to do.

"Night-time cover is usually from 7pm to 7am and GPs can be working flat out. The number of things that can go wrong in the middle of the night is greater, particularly as we have a growing elderly population.

"The co-operative I am in is busy and when I have worked a night I have to take a day off afterwards to recover."

Dr Burrell said despite the majority of GPs not wanting to work out of hours he believed that with the right incentives the trust would be able to recruit enough.

"I think the salary the trust will be offering will be attractive to some GPs, particularly younger GPs who may have a lot of debts to pay off," he said.

"I think there will be a small group of GPs who will offer to do the out of hours work rather than just two GPs."

He hoped that the new out of hours arrangements would not have an adverse impact on surgeries recruiting GPs but said there was a national shortage of GPs.

"People shouldn't underestimate the difficulty we are in," he said. "We have got to a stage where there are not enough doctors coming through

"There are some real fears country-wide about whether the new out of hours arrangements will cause very real problems on staffing.

"We at the PCT are working with the GP practices and doing a lot of work on evolving an out of hours system for the whole area and it will include professionals from Social Services, mental health, district nurses and the ambulance service."

Although the arrangements are not due to start until December 2004, the trust is keen to get more GPs involved in providing out of hours cover by this December to assist GPs who are not in a co-operative, including those in Wootton Bassett, Marlborough and Ramsbury.