TACKLING town centre crime and disorder is on the curriculum for students at Blackpool Sixth Form College this week with the launch of a creative competition.

Licensee representative and local DJ Joe Curran, from the Community Night Time Safety Forum, met with Blackpool licensee Dave Daley, Coun Mary Smith, DC Ian Mather and Shirley Richmond of the Sixth Form College recently to discuss the perception 16-18 year olds have about visiting the town centre at night.

And students will now have the chance to design a logo and prepare a mission statement that describes what they want to see in the future with top prizes up for grabs for the winner. The winning logo will then hopefully appear all over the town on doorpersons' jackets, night club flyers, posters and on council paperwork to let visitors know they are backing the scheme.

"We felt the future customers of our town centre needed to have a voice about the things that concern them," said Joe. "And what came through was a realistic and very valid point of view.

"Main concerns were from girls afraid to walk along certain areas at night such as The Strand on Queen's Square, Market Street and down Bank Hey Street for fear of being assaulted as it's too dark.

"Also doorpersons need to be more visible -- possibly with the high visibility jackets displaying the logo -- and taxi ranks needed better policing."

Head of English Shirley Richmond said of the scheme: "We were very happy to be involved and have taken this on as part of our course work and the students are busily working on their logos.

"Some of the themes seem to be about travelling in groups and not withdrawing cash from cashpoints at night and it's all been very inventive so far. It's also very important that the logos are written in a language that young people are going to listen to."

DS Tony Conboye of the police said: "We are eager to listen to people's views and endeavour to work towards making the town centre a safer place."