BENJAMIN Britten High School recently played host to Waveney's first official youth council meeting, which involved representatives from school councils across the area.

BENJAMIN Britten High School recently played host to Waveney's first official youth council meeting, which involved representatives from school councils across the area. This included Kirkley, Denes and Benjamin Britten, in Lowestoft, Sir John Leman, in Beccles, and Bungay High School, as well as the Ashley School and Warren School, in Lowestoft.

The idea of a youth council is for young people from across Waveney to come together and share their views and aspirations for their area.

We first started working with Waveney District Council by attending a Youth Take Over Day, which was organised by their community development team. Young people from each school council went to the Town Hall in Lowestoft and together we discussed what else could be done in the area for young people.

We had a range of ideas from students wanting more places to go, supplementary bus passes for pupils with a long journey to school, more disabled facilities and opportunities for those less able. I personally think this was a very clever, refreshing and fun way to get the youth involved in new and up coming ideas. No voice was put down, they were all heard.

The next youth take over day took place in November and was an opportunity to meet with other schools again and plan how we would like a youth council to operate in the future.

In January a group of students from Lowestoft's high schools met with senior managers from the council to discuss their annual budget. The young people who attended learnt about the council's income and had their chance to say how they would like to see it spent.

This continued at another event, which was held at Benjamin Britten High School on February 2 - this was the first official Waveney Youth Council meeting. We discussed what has been happening for young people recently, both in our schools and in the community, what we will need to do to keep this youth council going, and other youth groups we can involve to make sure everyone has a voice.

Our next meeting is on March 24 at Bungay High School. Then we are going to have an election of committee members, including chairperson, vice-chair and secretary.