STUDENTS from Witton Park High School, Business and Enterprise College showed enterprising flair by creating a winning business concept.

The team of six were winners of the Ritherdon Enterprising Innovations Challenge for their idea for secure storage systems to use in vans, beating off competition from teams from four other schools in the borough.

The challenge day was held at Witton City Learning Centre, Blackburn, on Monday, organised by E4A Enterprise, an enterprise learning event company, and sponsored by Blackburn with Darwen Council. St Bede's, Darwen Moorland, Pleckgate, St Wilfrid's, and Witton Park High Schools each entered two teams of six.

E4A worked with the secondary schools and Ritherdon and Co Ltd in Darwen, to create a real-life business challenge for pupils aged 14 to 19. Teams had a few hours to come up with new business ideas for an engineering challenge from scratch, working to tight deadlines to create a realistic working environment.

E4A director Peter Dickinson said: "Each team looked at the Ritherdon products, researched their competitors' products worldwide, and recommended a new product that Ritherdon could develop to expand their sales this year."

The challenge was provided in conjunction with the Blackburn with Darwen Pathfinder Enterprise Group with sponsorship from the council' regeneration fund.

  • More details at the website below..