GP trainees who come to Cumbria to work from September will be eligible for a £20,000 bursary.

Health chiefs say the move is to encourage young doctors to move to the county and stay here to live and work.

Nicky O'Connor, programme director of the Success Regime - a partnership of health organisations working together to tackle problems including recruitment - said they were actively trying to encourage doctors to come and work here. And she also said they were attending a GP recruitment fair in June.

Alan Alexander, a shadow governor with the North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, said people are waiting up to three weeks for a non-urgent appointment to see their GP.

And he told a meeting of the West Cumbria Community Forum health group: "We are going to be seriously depleted in the next 10 to 15 years of medical staff."

Whitehaven GP David Rogers, and medical director of the Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said a recent survey suggested that access to a GP had not improved and that in Copeland the area was one in four GPs down.

"The survey suggests access is more difficult," said Dr Rogers. And to a suggestion that patients could be switched from one surgery to another for better access, he replied: "There is no spare capacity in general practice."

Helen Horton, lead GP for Copeland, told the meeting: "There are pressures everywhere in GP practice. We have a lot of different ideas and hopefully we will see a more collaborative approach. There are not enough GPs anywhere in the county, particularly in Copeland we do struggle with recruitment and retention." She said they were also aware that the Moorside development would be an issue for further pressure on GP and A&E services.

Following the recent publication of a national GP patient survey, Copeland MP Jamie Reed called on the Government to do more to support patients and GPs.

He said more than one in five people were unable to get an appointment or had to wait a week or more; almost one in 10 were unable to get an appointment at all and that 6,000 people turned to other NHS services after being unable to get an appointment.

"The survey shows that the experiences of patients in the Cumbrian CCG area have worsened compared with the data published in January 2015," said the MP. "The most recent survey shows that 8.73 per cent of people in Cumbria were unable to get an appointment. This means around 45,600 people were unable to get a GP appointment the last time they tried. This has risen from 8.59 per cent in the survey published in January 2015." 

He added: "Our family doctors are working incredibly hard in the face of rising demand and dwindling resources. Patients rightly recognise the effort that GPs put in, but the Government’s inaction has meant that GPs are working with their hands tied behind their back."