DORSET pensioners moved by the refugee crisis have offered their spare bedrooms to those in need, a United Nations spokesperson has said.

Laura Padoan, who works for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the organisation has experienced "unprecedented" offers of help from ordinary Britons.

And from the elderly in this county who have told of their willingness to offer help to cyclists in Cardiff travelling in convoy to donating bikes to migrants in Calais, the British public has responded "generously", Ms Padoan said.

"I've worked for the UNHCR for more than seven years and, to be honest, this is the most generous response I've seen in terms of the way it has touched people and their willingness to offer help on a very personal level," she said.

"The public has responded very generously. We are receiving calls and emails and people contacting us over Twitter in the UK to ask how they can help.

"We have had pensioners in Dorset and in Tunbridge Wells saying that they have a spare room they could offer to Syrian refugees, and that they feel quite strongly that messages we are hearing from politicians don't chime with their sense of needing to offer a welcome and a safe place for those people they are seeing in the news fleeing the war.

"They are not even people we would necessary consider activists in this area. It's people who are going about their everyday lives who are opening newspapers, seeing images on the news, and being profoundly affected by the images they are seeing and want to send a very strong message of support and solidarity.

"It is incredibly generous and quite humbling as well."

She said Britons are being moved to take action because the shocking images beamed across the world are "very much on Britain's doorstep".

Ms Padoan said the public's response suggests the country is far more willing to welcome refugees than comments from politicians suggest.

The images of the three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on Turkey's shore are so shocking it could prompt a sea-change in how we view the crisis, she added.

She said: "I think a lot of people will think about their own families and their own children in relation to those images. It is difficult for politicians to turn their backs on those kind of images and the very real tragedy that is happening."

The Syrian refugee crisis is the worst the organisation has seen in 25 years and Britain needs to do more to offer homes to those fleeing violence and persecution, she warned.

She said: "We do feel there could be a much greater response in terms of offering or increasing the number of resettlement places, because that is the only way we'll prevent people putting their lives at risk in the hands of smugglers."