CITIZENSHIP and the issues surrounding it will be high on the agenda at the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Young People's Centre.

Bob Rathmill, who is 49 and used to be a lecturer at Halton College, has taken up a new post at the centre and will be developing programmes based around citizenship and conflict resolution.

The issue of citizenship is set to become part of new criteria for the curriculum in September 2002.

Bob will be concentrating on key stage three, which includes 11 to 14-year-olds and key stage four, which includes 14 to 16-year-olds.

He is now set to begin networking with schools to develop an educational pack and resources based around conflict resolution and citizenship which could be used nationwide as part of the school curriculum in the future.

He said: "I'm really looking forward to my new role. It's an exciting project which has a lot of reasons to exist. We can see around us that people are not voting as much and are not as interested in their local community. It's about people's rights and responsibilities."