Doctors in England voted to reject the government’s latest offer on working conditions, the British Medical Association union said on Monday, confirming that a five-day strike planned for this week would go ahead.

The doctors’ union – which represents the so-called resident doctors who make up nearly half of the medical workforce – will stage a walkout from Wednesday as part of a series of strikes that have taken place this year over pay and working conditions.

“Tens of thousands of frontline doctors have come together to say ‘no’ to what is clearly too little, too late,” BMA chair Jack Fletcher said in a statement.

He said the union was still willing to work to find a solution.

The strike will add pressure to an already stretched healthcare service after NHS England warned last week that hospitals were facing a “worst-case scenario” from a wave of a super flu.

Health minister Wes Streeting appealed to the doctors to go to work.

“There is no need for these strikes to go ahead this week, and it reveals the BMA’s shocking disregard for patient safety,” he said, adding that the strikes are “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous”.

The BMA said 83% of resident doctors rejected the government’s offer in an online survey with a 65% turnout of its more than 50,000 members.

The offer made by the government last Wednesday did not include new pay terms, something the BMA has been campaigning for even before the Labour Party won last year’s election.

At the time, Streeting struck a deal with the doctors, offering them a 22% pay rise – 7 percentage points below the 29% sought by the BMA.

The union has also been pushing for a better pay offer from the 5.4% pay increase announced earlier this year, saying resident doctors were still suffering from years of pay erosion.