FAMILY doctors are to be given more responsibility over the future shape of NHS services in Cumbria.

From April, an increasing share of the county’s annual £800 million health budget will be directly managed by six GP-led boards for South Lakeland, Eden, Barrow, Allerdale, Car-lisle and Copeland.

Each will be responsible for commissioning hospital, nur-sing and other health services for people in their area.

They will be largely free from NHS Cumbria, which will keep responsibility for managing the allocation of resources to different parts of the county and buying health services that affect the whole county.

The move is seen as the next step in Cumbria’s drive to provide health services closer to where people live.

Family doctors deliver three million consultations with patients in GP practices every year in Cumbria and account for 90 per cent of the public's contact with the NHS.

In future, GPs across Cumbria will be given the chance to run their own community health services based around a town, or a wider geographical area.

Dr Peter Weaving, one of NHS Cumbria’s leading GPs, said that tightening public sector budgets meant that the next few years were going to be ‘enormously challenging’ for the NHS.

“The family doctor with the patient on the other side of their consulting room desk is the best person to decide how to arrange health services in the years ahead.

“This is about putting more responsibility in the hands of local clinicians – not creating an army of mini-primary care trusts.”

Leading the locality board in South Lakeland will be Dr Hugh Reeve, who has been a family doctor for 24 years.

The Eden board will be led by Dr Helen Jervis.