The leaders of NHS have said that they are planning to offer week-round access to some services in acute hospitals in only 15 months.

The leaders also said that they are aiming to offer better week-round access to GPs and other primary care by March 2017 to a fifth of people. Other plans also include, meeting key targets including 95 per cent of patients wait for less than four hours in A&E and all ambulance trusts respond to 75 per cent of immediately life-threatening calls within eight minutes.

NHS’s main organisational and financial bodies said on Tuesday that the changes will be implemented with developing culture of cost containment instead of growing incomes. They are planning to restore financial balance in the health service by next year. However, the task is very difficult as NHS was £1.6billion in deficit until recently.

The planning guidance from the NHS leaders aim to bring joined care instead of focusing on individual health and social care organisations. The hospitals will only be asked to make an annual efficiency savings of 2 per cent, which is half of 4 per cent originally sought from the hospitals. The guidance comes a week after £560 billion was promised for the NHS up to April 2021 and will guide the way health service in managed during the coming five years.