TEENAGE pals, fed-up of being labelled yobs by villagers, decided to do something about it.

Fourteen-year-olds Julia Christie and Stephanie Murray called a public meeting with residents in Greenmount to meet them face-to-face.

The teenagers, sometimes as many as 40, have been congregating in a grassy area behind Greenmount United Reformed Church during the summer and annoyed nearby residents have complained to the police.

Now a truce has been called thanks to the girls and the police have helped to organise the meeting between the teenagers and villagers.

Julia told the Bury Times: "The police kept coming up and talking to us and moving us on. Sometimes they would search us for alcohol. We thought it was unfair because all we were doing was talking to our friends."

Julia admitted that there had been incidents of minor vandalism but said the majority of teenagers were well behaved. "We told the police we wanted to meet the residents and put our side forward and assure them that we were no trouble.

"The residents see us as intimidating but we do not mean to be. We just have nowhere to go."

Around 16 residents and six teenagers and the police attended the meeting to try and resolve their differences.

Julia added: "The meeting went some way to bridging an understanding between us and the residents.

"The locals seemed to think that 90 per cent of us are drunk which we did not agree with.

She said that the residents seemed to understand that the teenagers had nowhere to go in their local area.

"Some residents even offered to help us find somewhere."

A police spokesman for Ramsbottom and Tottington Township praised the teenagers for taking the initiative to try and resolve the problems between the two generations in a "mature manner".

Tottington councillor Yvonne Wright who chaired the meeting said it was a "way forward" to finding a solution to the ongoing problem.

She said: "The meeting was very constructive. At the start some of the residents were quite negative towards the teenagers but by the end both sides seemed to understand each other's point of view.

"Hopefully this meeting will go some way towards the two communities living together in harmony."