Birmingham City Council has come up with an unusual way to remind people to obey social distancing rules, by mowing two metre strips into its parks and green spaces.

The council said that its grounds maintenance team are cutting 'channels' into grass, and leaving the same width uncut to act as a visual guide to visitors.

Cllr John O’Shea, the council's cabinet member for street scene, said: 'By cutting these channels, we will be making our parks more usable – and usable in a safer way, where people will have some guidance on how to follow the national guidelines to stay 2m away from people outside of your family.

'The fact that we have 591 parks and open spaces of vastly differing sizes means it is not easy to promote the social distancing message across each and every site, but this is a way of doing something, best utilising the limited resources we have at this challenging time.'