VILLAGERS are tackling speeding motorists by planting thousands of flowers - after noticing drivers slowed down as they passed them.

Long Newnton parish councillors are using wildflowers beside the B4014 to encourage people to slow down.

The village has a problem with fast moving through-traffic between the nearby towns of Tetbury and Malmesbury.

But as a small council it receives limited funds from the government for calming measures - and so has turned to flowers.

Officials first planted flowers along the roadside during the pandemic to help improve biodiversity.

Residents quickly noticed many butterflies and bees in the wild flowers, and as the seeds heads formed birds took advantage of the plentiful food supply.

But they noticed that as well as attracting more wildlife, motorists also slowed down when they passed the flowers.

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The flowers are being paid for with crowdfunding in the village.

Resident Sue Wykes told the BBC "Anything we can do to slow the traffic down in the village is going to be beneficial for the community."

Jenny Forde, cabinet member for health and wellbeing at Cotswold District Council, said: "Evidence has shown that if you introduce things like wildflowers, drivers will slow down because they feel like they're coming into somewhere that's looked after."

A crowdfunding campaign that has raised almost £8,000 for traffic-calming measures will be used to fund a three-year care program for the wild flowers.

A sign that flashes and records data when people are breaking the 30mph speed limit was also installed by the council.

According to the data, 90 per cent of motorists drive above the speed limit.

Di Thomas, the chair of Long Newnton Parish Council, told the BBC: "It's a shocking number.

"As a community, we are trying so hard to work out how we slow the speeding".

The data will be checked weekly and used to measure how effective the flowers are at deterring motorists from speeding.