A SELF-STYLED schoolboy "gangster" with a string of burglary convictions has been banned from parts of Accrington town centre.

But magistrates stopped short of naming the boy, from Accrington, despite appeals from the police, Hyndburn Council and Lancashire Evening Telegraph, saying they still needed to hear all the facts of the case at a full hearing.

The interim Anti-Social Behaviour Order on the 15-year-old means that, in addition to the ban from certain areas, he must observe a curfew from 7pm to 7am.

Sergeant Claire Holbrook, Accrington Police co-ordinator told the court that since 1998 the teenager had accrued more than 30 convictions including burglaries, public order offences and one conviction for drug-related offences.

"He's been on a police detention tag and on many curfew conditions," she said.

She said that on one occasion last month a police colleague had seen him and asked why he was not in school.

The boy said: 'Because I'm a gangster', she said. He then ran off using abusive language to the officer, she told the hearing at Hyndburn magistrates court yesterday.

"This is a child of 15 and if you look through the background he's constantly out and seen by officers after midnight and into the early hours of the morning. We need to keep this child in his house after 7pm and not committing crimes," said Sgt Holbrook.

Asking for reporting restrictions to be lifted she said: "It's very important that members of the community know his face so when he's down a back alley near their house they can ring the police because they know he's on an interim order."

The order will run until the full hearing on May 21 although Graeme Parkinson, defending, said he intended to appeal to the crown court to have the order lifted.

"It's not an easy thing to impose a curfew on someone. It's a very draconian measure," he said.

The teenager's mother declined to comment after the hearing.

On Friday, magistrates lifted reporting restrictions in the case of Aaron Stoddard, 15, of Spring Street, in the borough's first interim order because they felt residents in areas he operated in needed to know who he was.