Pupils from a school in Kent have been crowned champions of the 2011 Water Design Challenge.

The challenge is an award-winning scheme run by Southern Water and the Design Council to inspire youngsters to cut their water-use and carbon footprint, all with a helping hand from professional designers and water industry experts. Ten schools took part in this year's event and the five shortlisted entries shared a £20,000 prize fund.

Fort Pitt Grammar School's winning entry demonstrated how it would reduce water use in the school's toilets by a third, saving around £5,000 on the annual water bill. Click here for details of the winning entry.

The challenge asked Key Stage 3 students to design a product, service or campaign to help solve the problem of water waste in their schools. Each school was provided with a range of online learning resources and our experts were on hand to help students understand where water comes from, how it is treated before it reaches our taps and why we need to reduce waste.

Students were teamed up with a professional designer who helped them use design skills to come up with practical solutions.

Pupils from Sholing Technology College, in Southampton, were highly commended for an innovative range of domestic products urging people to save water, money and energy. Click here to read more about their scheme.

Thomas Bennett Community College, from Crawley; Midhurst Rother College, from Midhurst; and Thomas Aveling School, from Rochester, were named joint runners up.

The ten schools which took part in the challenge were:

For more information on the challenge, please visit www.designcouncil.org.uk/waterdesignchallenge or contact us at wdc@southernwater.co.uk