Cheshire's police commissioner has said 'honest conversations' need to be had about how to deal with children who work around the forthcoming social media ban.

The matter arose following a conversation about phone pouches, which will be introduced in the majority of Cheshire Schools from September to stop pupils accessing their devices during the school day.

Commissioner Dan Price told the police and crime panel: "We have a round-table planned post September where we will be inviting education leaders, we'll be inviting youth services, we'll be inviting a whole multitude of different representatives to talk about the future of online time and the implications of a social media ban that will be coming into effect next year…

"We are to have honest conversations about what happens when we've got young people who work around the systems."

The commissioner gave the example of drivers who break the speed limit being offered an awareness course about why speeding isn't appropriate.

"I think we'll probably start thinking a bit more about, for those who are regular breakers of the rules, why online time isn't appropriate," he said.

"Let's use this as an opportunity to talk about what great fun can be had in the outside world, and that could mean a whole bunch of things."

Mr Price said the ban is being introduced 'because there are real harms and risks online that the data is showing us, we need to make an intervention'.

"And if those tech firms had self-regulated in a way in which had prevented this, we wouldn't even be entertaining legislation and regulation," he said.

"But they failed in that capacity, so I'm just trying to get ahead of where I think we can be, which is workarounds being adopted and what might appropriate interventions be for people who repeatedly don't follow the law."

When panel member Prof Barry Godfrey raised concerns that that might look like 'dragging children into the criminal process', Mr Price said it was 'quite the opposite'.

"I think a lot of this can be done voluntarily when people are informed as to why this is being done and what the risks are behind it," he said.

"But we're in a fast-moving place on this. I want to make sure that we are thinking about the consequences before they just emerge, and that's what the purpose of the round-table is going to be about."

He added: "I want to really emphasise that this is not about us policing schools any more than what we are – quite the opposite.

"If we do this well, we will be preventing young people being exposed to violent material, and I say that because it is happening."

He told the panel he had spoken to a school recently which, two years ago, had never made any referrals to Prevent – a national programme that aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.

"Last year [they] made one referral to Prevent, and this year made eight referrals to Prevent," he said.

"This is my judgement on this – there is only one thing, really, one avenue which we don't have an awful lot of transparency about what is changing, what is happening, and that is the social media world.

"We do not have transparency about what those algorithms are doing."