Hyndburn youngsters took to the polls to elect their Youth MP.

More than 2,700 children from schools across the borough voted for their representative for local and natioanl issues.

Hardeep Sidhu, 16, from Accrington Academy, gained the most votes and will become the areas representative in the UK Youth Parliament as well as being a member of both Hyndburn and Lancashire Youth Council and advise on issues affecting young people.

Hardeep says his priorities are bullying, drug and alcohol abuse and sex and relationship education.

He said: "There should be more things for young people to do to keep them off the streets where there's peer pressure to bet involved in things they don't want to.

"And we've had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe before so I want to have more sex education on STIs and contraception."

The other candidates were Hamza Jahanzeb, Matt Southwood and Hannah Fielding.

The election process began in December with elections in schools and was completed on Tuesday, February 21 with a closed ballot by members of Hyndburn Youth Council at the town hall.