MORE than 400 school children, including some from Petersfield, were given a taste of local government on a tour of the East Hampshire District Council offices.

Pupils from Steep Primary School, Liphook Junior School, Buriton Primary School, Woodlea Primary School, Grayshott Primary School, The Butts Primary School, Four Marks Primary School, Herne Junior School, St Matthew’s Primary School, The Holme Primary School and St Mary’s Bentworth Primary School, all visited the council offices at Penns Place

They were taken round the building and given an insight into how the council delivers more than 100 services a day to 115,000 people in East Hampshire from it’s officer at Penns Place.

The visits were part of National Takeover Day, an event which sees organisations across the country open its doors to young people to hear their views and give them a glimpse of the world of work.

While at Penns Place the pupils also spoke to their local councillors about issues facing their communities and held their own debate in the council chamber on topics ranging from school uniforms to banning Russian athletes from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Cllr Julie Butler, EHDC councillor for Customer Relations, said: “It’s so important young people engage with their local council and understand what it does and how it can help them.

“Too many people have a distant relationship with the local authorities and this sort of event will really help encourage the next generation of voters to get involved in local democracy and take an interest in how their district is run.”

Bramshott and Liphook district councillor Bill Mouland, who met the children with fellow ward councillor Angela Glass, said: “They were a credit to their school, took a keen interest in their community and gave us a good grilling on improvements that could be made. They then held a very well organised and controlled debate about school uniform in which just about everyone took part. On the tour of the offices they were interested and engaged and brought a smile to everyone’s faces.”

East Hampshire MP Damian Hinds joined the children of Bentworth Primary School on their tour of Penns Place.

He said: “We had a fascinating chat about local democracy and I was delighted to see the children were really interested in the subject. At that age they are all so full of enthusiasm – they all want to change the world!

“They asked a lot of probing questions about how government works and were happy to be challenged with a few questions themselves. It was a really engaging and rewarding experience.”