More than 8,000 people in Herefordshire have signed a 'scrap Brexit' petition that is growing so quickly it crashed the government's system.

The Revoke Article 50 petition is now nearing three million signatures and climbing towards the highest ever number of signatures on the House of Commons petitions website.

The petition had been doing only modestly until Prime Minister Theresa May's live TV broadcast.

Suddenly the petition took off, with 2,000 signatures a minute being added.

At just after 10am today the total stood at 2,783,000, but minutes later had jumped to 2,883,000 - another 100,000.

The highest ever figure on the petition website is four million, but this petition has already broken the record for the fastest growing.

Yesterday the site crashed several times and a statement from the House of Commons said: "The rate of signing is the highest the site has ever had to deal with and we have had to make some changes to ensure the site remains stable and open for signatures and new petitions. Thanks for bearing with us."

A map allows people to track the number of signatures in local constituencies.

In Herefordshire this afternoon 3,993 had signed in the South and 4,231 in the North.

In surroundings areas numbers were: Brecon and Radnor, 1370; Forest of Dean 1390; West Worcestershire 2008 and Ludlow 1432 (1.7%).

Growth of signatures has been speeded by social media sharing, especially Twitter.

The petition's heat map shows the constituencies with the highest number of signatories, including seats in Bristol, Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford, London, Cambridge and Brighton.

The petition appears to have been spurred by the prospect of a No Deal cliff edge, as well as the prime minister's tough speech.

But the government insists it will not Revoke Article 50.

To view the latest total, view the map or sign the petition, go to https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=241584