YOUNG people are being offered the chance to show off their skills on a skateboarding and blading course coming to Carnforth next week.

The equipment will be set up in the grounds of Carnforth High School, next Wednesday, 28 August, to help kick-start a project to install a new skateboarding facility in the town.

Earlier this year the ramp by the canal was removed after years of repeated vandalism made it too dangerous to use.

Since then a group of teenagers, called 'Boarders and Bladers', have been meeting with youth workers to try and work out how the equipment could be replaced.

Karen Kendall, of Lancaster Youth and Community Services, said the idea of the next week's event was to show people the kind of equipment that was available, and to signal the start of a consultation process asking youngsters and residents of the town what they want to see happen.

A national company called Tribe Enterprises, which has recently successfully overseen a project to install a new skateboard facility in Oxfordshire, is helping to organise the event.

Miss Kendall said people from Tribe Enterprises would be on hand to assess the skills and abilities of the young people to help work out what kind of equipment they need.

People who attend will be asked to fill in a questionnaire, with the company then following up the event by working out possible locations for the new facility, and looking at how it would be managed.

Miss Kendall said she hoped as many people would come along to the open event, which will run from 10am till 4pm, including teenagers from nearby villages, and adults from the town.

"With any facility like this it is imperative together community support behind it, " she said.

"I think there is a lot of positive feeling in Carnforth at the moment that young people need something like this, but we want people to come along and say what they think."

The event has been financed using part of a £5,000 grant awarded towards the project by Lancaster Community Safety Partnership, which has also allocated a further £2,500 towards construction costs of the new equipment.