Ministers are set to push through a new contract for consultants after the deal was rejected by the NHS's senior doctors.

Long serving NHS consultants are to be offered career breaks in a bid to woo the key medics to flagship health service reforms.

Senior consultants with over 20 years service will be offered a three month sabbatical, Alan Milburn has announced.

The plan, which will cost around £15 million a year and apply to nearly a thousand doctors, comes as the health secretary struggles to push through a new consultants contract by April.

"We will create the opportunity for consultants to take sabbaticals. This new system will support and refresh the careers of experienced consultants," said Milburn.

"By 2005/06 we want to enable around 800 consultants per year to enjoy sabbaticals from their work of between two and three months. As NHS capacity expands the numbers of consultants benefiting from sabbaticals will also grow."

The move has triggered tit-for-tat calls for the career breaks to be extended to other NHS workers.

Unison said that "if this scheme were extended to all health workers it would help tackle burn-out and allow people to re-charge their batteries".

"Unfortunately it is not just senior consultants who feel the strain working in the NHS - this applies to nurses, paramedics, porters, cleaners and the rest of the health care team," said the unions' head of health, Karen Jennings."It is a fact that offering sabbaticals does help to keep staff and the NHS desperately needs to find ways of holding on to all its staff."

A "new rewards" package follows the rejection by consultants of an employment contract negotiated and agreed between the government and the British Medical Association.

New contracts requiring consultants to undertake more work for the NHS and to cover evenings and weekends are central to Milburn's efforts to reform the health service.

Ministers fear that a failure to push through the new deal will leave the government exposed as the health service falls behind on key targets to cut waiting times.

Milburn has written to the British Medical Association, the NHS Confederation and almost 40,000 NHS consultants and specialist registrars in a direct sales pitch on the rewards package - intended to sugar the pill of the rejected contract.

And he intends to introduce the changes from this April "following a short period of discussion with representative organisations".

The move that will see local NHS employers taking on senior doctors "in something for something" deals.

"This package is designed to recognise and reward those NHS consultants who do most for NHS patients," Milburn said.

"Local NHS employers will be able to choose how best to use the resources I am committing to reward consultants, reform working practices and improve patient services."

"Using the resources we had set aside for implementing the new contract - some £250 million by 2005/06 - we now intend to give local services together with their doctors a choice on how to move forward."

The move allowing local health employers to cut their own deal with doctors has been welcomed by the NHS Confederation.

"A lesson from the failure of the consultant contract has been that one solution probably won't fit all organisations and across all consultant specialties. This does allow a system to be devised to meet the requirements of local services and local consultants." said the confederation's policy manager, Alastair Henderson.

"Following the original ballot result we canvassed the views of NHS organisations, and we believe there will be support for these incentives which can be used to bring real benefits for patients. We believe this system allows the right balance to be struck between national standards and local flexibility."