Pupils from Sandwich have reached the top spot in the TeenTech awards with their flood prevention design.

Three Sandwich Technology students, Joe Griffiths, 13, Lauren Kemp, 12, and Kaitlan Hopper, 12, were presented with the award for the environment category at a ceremony held at the Royal Society, London.

The design was to develop automatic flood guards to be built into the door frames of new houses.

The idea came after the tidal surge flooded homes in Sandwich last year and sandbags were distributed to try and protect houses.

The students decided guards could be controlled electronically and triggered by the breaking of river banks, or via an app on a smartphone.

Last week, they attended the awards ceremony after impressing judges Stephen Fry, James May and Maggie Philbin.

The Duke of York, Prince Andrew, and patron of TeenTech visited the Royal Society to meet the talented young entrepreneurs and invited them to a special reception at Buckingham Palace on October 14.

He said: “If we don’t encourage young people to be interested in technology and the digital world and apply that knowledge then we are not going to be a rich country in the future.

“All these projects that you have undertaken are about problem solving and that’s what is needed in the real world. And the solutions you are finding could make a difference to a whole range of people, not only now but into the future.”

Students aged between 11-16 years old were encouraged to search for solutions to real problems in 15 categories.

Pupil Joe Griffiths explained: “Recently we have seen a lot of flooding and the town was put on red alert as the river was going to break its banks. Sandbags were quickly given out but as this is a very old town many homes got flooded. It got us thinking about what should be done to prevent this from happening in the future.”

Maggie Philbin, CEO of TeenTech added: “The ideas we’ve seen here today have been truly inspirational and I am exasperated at young people being portrayed as directionless hoodies when in reality there’s a huge amount of talent in classrooms all over the UK.”