A student from a school in Potters Bar has won a specialist award for her work around environmental design.

Amira Eltholth, a Year 11 pupil at Dame Alice Owen's School, was part of a team which won a Specialist Subcontractor Award at the Environmental Design Challenge at Imperial College in London.

She was one of 78 students from six different schools who were tasked with bringing forward ideas to regenerate Kroo Bay in Sierra Leone in an environmentally responsible way, and to attract investment through tourism.

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Amira and her team impressed the judges with their floating eco-tourism habitats, which involve residential huts floating on the surface of the bay.

"The competition was quite fun to begin with but then as the deadline approached, there was a bit of pressure to make sure we got everything done," she said.

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"It was a really good experience though, I met lots of new people and we all worked really well together as a team.

"We are already feeling the affects of climate change and it is just going to get worse and worse.

"We are now approaching a point where we just have to make changes to our lifestyle and how we live our lives if we hope to make an impact."