TWO dedicated St Annes bobbies have scooped top awards for outstanding community police work.

PC Martin Taylor, who has been the Heyhouses community ward beat officer for the past three and a half years and has served in Lancashire Constabulary for 22 years, has been named Lancashire Community Police Officer of the Year.

And PC Alan Robertson, a ward beat officer at St Annes, was presented with the George Herbert Redman Award in a ceremony at Blackpool. The award recognises officers who go beyond the call of duy to improve community relations.

PC Taylor will now go on to represent Lancashire at the National Community Police Officer of the Year Awards.

Meticulous Martin has reduced crime on his beat by 48.2 per cent and became a founding member of the Fylde Community Safety Partnership Young People's Issues Group.

His major achievement has been the renovation of Hope Street Park, for which he formulated a £30,000 project with Fylde Borough Council to address the long-term juvenile nuisance problems, which included assaults, damage, intimidation and drug abuse.

He is now working with the council to create new football facilities on three other public spaces surounding his beat.

PC Taylor said he was delighted to be selected. "I feel very honoured and I'm looking forward to going to London for the national finals on November 21," he said.

Coun Anne Smith said: "Martin Taylor is the very essence of a good community policeman and I wholeheartedly recommend his nomination."

PC Robertson, aged 36, who has been a police officer for eight years, received a cheque for £400, which he planned to donate to the NSPCC.

He won the award for an innovative exercise in "virtual" justice in which he organised and re-created a multi-agency anti-drugs operation that was acted out by pupils at Lytham St Annes High Technology College.

During the exercise, role-playing pupils were arrested, advised, interviewed, charged, tried and convicted at the old courtrooms and public galleries above Lytham Police Station.

Headteacher Michael Payne said: "Such dedication goes far beyond the call of duty and is the sign of not only the complete professional but someone who has an intense belief in the inter-relationship between the police, education and the whole community."

The exercise was filmed by the police Imaging Unit so the film could be used to educate other pupils in the role of the police and the legal consequence of drugs misuse.

PC Mebs Ahmed, a minority ethnic liaison officer at police headquarters, Hutton, was also honoured at the ceremony in Blackpool.