Keen young programmers spent a week with an award-winning web design company as part of a 'Festival of Code'.

The five coders joined the CyberDuck agency in Elstree High Street this week to learn how to create a web application from scratch as part of the nationwide festival.

The team included sisters Asha and Maya Wills, 13 and 10, Daniel Vaughan, 15, Jake Sieradzki, 14, and Harjot Singh, 17, who had all found out about the project through recommendations, their school or through Google.

After being split into 'design' and 'functionality', the team were then tasked with creating an interactive site that uses information that is free for the public to reuse, such as live traffic reports and bin collections.

The group decided to create an app that enabled parents to find out the sunset times so they can let their children know what time they need to be in by.

Dylan Smith, who led the project, said: “I think it worked out pretty well. They all have different skill sets and interests, and just naturally fell into their roles for the task.”

The group will travel south to Plymouth today to give a presentation on their completed project and compete against other groups to win a prize.

Benjamin Maugain, mentor for the event, said: “This week is about following the same process that we follow when we are working. I think that is important for them to learn - that it’s not just the skills, because some of them had them already, but also building the team and sharing tasks.

“It’s really like an immersion week into coding.”