A youth forum is on the cards after law students at St John’s School, Marlborough, put their ideas to the Police and Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon, Angus Macpherson, on how the police can best engage with young people.

Mr Macpherson met GCSE and A-level law students and spent time discussing his role and debating how best to connect with young people during his visit on Tuesday last week.

He talked to four law classes about his achievements during the first few months as PCC and his vision for the role.

The groups also discussed the idea of a youth forum and a number of students expressed an interest in becoming involved.

Mr Macpherson said: “I enjoyed meeting the students at St John’s and hearing their views on the youth forum, which I am going to set up as a way to continue to engage with young people in the county.

“My new role is all about talking and listening to people in local communities on policing matters and that includes children and young people, so visits to schools like this are very useful to me.”

Sixth form students also gave the PCC useful advice on how best to use social media including Facebook and Twitter.

Year 12 student Jake Seaward, 16, said: “After talking about current local policing, we discussed how the service could move forward in the future and it was suggested that building a presence on social media sites would provide easy attention from younger citizens as they are the largest proportion of social site users, which of course led to the discussion of Paris Brown and how people can avoid making mistakes such as hers online.

“It was genuinely a great experience to meet the person who is in charge of keeping the streets in our local area safe and even offering him a few of our own ideas on how he can continue to improve the way that the local area is policed.”

Law teacher Leslie Spencer added: “The students enjoyed hearing about the strategic side of policing and, even more particularly, the PCC’s views on how we can reduce crime in the county.”