Council officers have been asked to check whether a legal challenge can be mounted to stop a new out-of-hours medical service which will leave the Witney area with just a nurse and a paramedic.

West Oxfordshire district councillors are unhappy with the scheme, due to start on September 1. The only doctor on duty after 10pm through to 8am will be at Abingdon Hospital.

Representatives from primary care trusts outlined the scheme to the council meeting. Meanwhile heavy leafleting has begun in southern Oxfordshire to explain the new £2m out-of-hours emergency service.

The emergency care centre at Abingdon Hospital will be staffed by GPs on a rota system supplied by an agency in Scotland, two paramedics and a nurse who will be on call from 6.30pm until 8am weekdays and at weekends and bank holidays, 24 hours a day.

Two "satellite" centres will also operate from Witney and Henley hospitals staffed by a nurse and paramedic. A GP will be on duty between 7pm and 10pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 2pm on Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays.

The new service has been brought in to cover for GPs who, under new contracts, no longer have to provide out-of-hours care. Many practices already employ locum companies to look after night-time and weekend work, but the new contracts mean that for a small reduction in their NHS fees, GPs can hand over the responsibility to primary care trusts.

All 32 GP practices with a total of 280,000 patients in south Oxfordshire have handed over responsibility for out-of-hours care to South East and South West Primary Care Trusts.

Tina Cooper, project manager for the new service, said all of the GPs in Witney had also decided to opt out of working the overnight shift under the new Government legislation that made the change necessary.

The council decided in its formal response to the PCTs to demand a GP in Witney for the overnight shift, and asked officers to find out if the council could stop the change.