A HIGH street shop owner has hit back at a tourist body after the organisation revealed it wanted to direct visitors away from Burford.

Cotswolds Tourism told the Oxford Mail on Monday that 'over-tourism' in the West Oxfordshire town had a 'horrible' impact on residents and they wanted to promote lesser-known areas of the region.

But Amanda Hanley, who runs her eponymous interior design store, feels this could damage local businesses and called on Cotswolds Tourism to increase parking in the town instead.

She said: "I was rather incensed that the tourist office wants to redirect tourism elsewhere.

"Tourists are our bread and butter.

"We love Burford and want it to flourish and get more people in.

"The problem is there's an enormous amount of traffic and we have limited parking.

"They should be thinking about how we should restrict the traffic."

Susie Hunt, Cotswolds Tourism partnership manager, said: "Cotswolds Tourism does work with the council on trying to find solutions but this is a fairly universal issue and not one that is easily solved.

"Extra parking spaces need to be near the town centre and such land is often hard to find and/or expensive: we work with about 20 towns across the Cotswolds and I can’t think of a single one that thinks their parking is adequate."