YOUNGSTERS have definite ideas on what £20,000 - to be made available to the country's first youth mayor - should be spent.

Fifteen-year-olds Samantha Evans and Adam Gallagher and his 12-year-old sister, Kirsty, would want an elected youth mayor of Middlesbrough to spend the money on providing a badly needed drop-in and activities centre for young people.

Both Sam and Adam plan to run for youth mayor of Middlesbrough, the first town in the UK to hold elections for such a post, backed with a budget.

Middlesbrough Council is hoping stake holder partners and private sector money will double the size of the mayoral budget.

He or she will be elected by the town's 9,000 secondary school pupils and will be answerable to an existing youth parliament which has a £60,000 budget.

Newlands School pupil Adam said: "I think it will work, that is the main thing.

"Obviously there may be a few problems, but it is something to work on.

"I reckon if we want to, we can make a difference.

"A lot of people complain about young people hanging about street corners and having nowhere to go.

"We could have somewhere for young people to go, somewhere they can sit around and talk.''

Sam, from Hallgarth School, said: "I would have something like regular youth clubs with perhaps a DJ, so we can get kids away from smoking and drinking in parks.

"At the moment we have nothing."

The aim of having an elected youth mayor is to get youngsters interested in local government and democracy because they neither understand what it means or how it works.

As revealed in The Northern Echo yesterday, the youth mayor who is elected following a postal ballot next month, will work with Middlesbrough's first elected mayor who will be in office in May