WATCH your speed, or they’ll watch it for you.

Villagers fed up with drivers speeding through their narrow country lanes have bought their own speed gun.

Eight parish councils in south Oxfordshire teamed up to buy the device and will pass it between each other.

Teams of volunteers will take it in turns to use the radar device.

Any drivers caught breaking the limit cannot be prosecuted on villagers’ evidence alone, but they will get a warning letter from police.

It comes after years of frustration with reckless motorists haring along narrow village roads.

Retired council worker David Sibbot, who is helping to run the scheme in Charney Bassett, said: “Sometimes it may just be people driving inappropriately fast, rather than breaking the limit.

“A lot of our roads are small, they have been damaged by the weather and you can see people are just going too fast. It has been identified as a problem.”

The 72-year-old former trading standards officer said the issue was especially bad when people used the villages as rat-runs to avoid delays on main routes.

He added: “The police have limited resources – they can’t sit in all these villages all the time, so these eight parishes decided to put some money in.”

All the villages in Thames Valley Police’s Faringdon East Neighbourhood Action Group said they had the same problem, so their parish councils got together to do something about it.

Just before Christmas, Charney Bassett, East Hanney, West Hanney, Kingston Bagpuize and Southmoor, Stanford in the Vale, Littleworth, Longworth and Shellingford raised the £2,500 to buy their radar gun.

This month the councils have started training teams of volunteers on how to use the gear.

In Charney Bassett alone, 11 villagers signed up.

From February, anyone driving through the villages might spot a team of three or four locals dressed in high-visibility clothing.

One volunteer will man the gun, which can calculate a vehicle’s maximum speed over 100 yards, while another will note down the registration and make of the car.

If it is speeding, the team forwards the information on to police, who will send the driver a stiff letter.

Mr Sibbot said: “It’s not legal. You can’t take a driver to court from this, but the police will say ‘watch it’.”

He added: “It is quite clear this method does slow the traffic down.

“It is intended to be educational.”

If results show a real problem area in one of the villages, the police have promised to send officers down to conduct their own checks, and anyone caught speeding will face legal action.

Thames Valley Police spokesman Hannah Jones said: “If a speeding problem is identified in a particular area through these checks then officers will look into setting up speed enforcement in the area.”