The Prime Minister has announced that more than 1,000 GP practices will trial 24-hour telephone access and weekend surgeries in a bid to radically extend GP opening hours.

The scheme, set up by NHS England to improve access to appointments for patients, attracted 250 bids for just nine pilots but some were so strong that 20 bids from 1,147 practices have now been accepted.

This means that the area covered by the scheme, which was originally only going to cover some 500,000 patients, has been expanded too, although the amount of money to be spent on the scheme has not increased.

The Challenge Fund pilots are being set up to enable NHS England to work more closely with GP practices up and down the country to promote innovation, share learning and deliver the benefits to patients of extending access to services.

They will also explore a number of ways to extend access to GP services to better meet local patient needs, including longer opening hours, such as extended weekday opening and opening on Saturdays and Sundays.

Successful bids include a £1m Birmingham scheme to offer appointments to patients, seven days a week, 12 hours a day from 08.00 to 20.00 but the largest amount, £5.6m, has been awarded to NHS Barking and Dagenham CCG and NHS Havering and Redbridge CCG to run an extended access and ‘tailored care’ scheme.

Areas where networks of GP practices will provide evening and weekend surgeries also include parts of London, parts of Yorkshire, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Lancashire, Kent, Bristol, Herefordshire, Derbyshire and Nottingham.