THE artistic talents of children went into creating a Christmas card that will be sent to some of the country’s most important people.

Members of the Royal family and Prime Minister David Cameron along with businesses, councils and civic dignitaries in County Durham will all see the work of pupils from Sedgefield Primary School.

They were invited to design a card by Sedgefield beat officer PC Keith Todd who runs an annual competition to create the card that he sends to 100 important people.

This year’s contest was sponsored by Jill Williamson, executive director of Sedgefield Racecourse, and the winner was seven-year-old Emily Burrell.

The runners-up were Ellie Spink, ten, Jack Carmichael, ten, Rafa Nawabi, five, and Emma Louise Dickenson, nine.

To help them transfer their ideas onto paper, PC Todd set up a cardboard cut-out of himself at a table laden with festive food in the school.

He said: “This is the 16th year I’ve asked children at the schools in Sedgefield and Fishburn to use their imagination to draw me a card, I devised the competition to introduce myself as the beat officer and it has become

“The cards make people aware of my role and remind them that the police, and myself, are here for them.

“Any one of the pupil’s designs could have won , Emily’s was chosen because it was a bold, eye-catching picture or a slim me enjoying Christmas dinner.

“It will be sent to lots of people and often they reply with nice letters of thanks.”