UKIP Wales will help pick assembly candidates, says Farage.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has insisted the Welsh party will help decide key candidates for the assembly election.

Former UKIP candidates have warned against allowing high profile figures from outside Wales to stand in 2016 in the most winnable seats.

Mr Farage said representatives from the "national party and from Wales" would pick the regional list candidates.

He was speaking to BBC Wales before the start of UKIP's annual conference, in Doncaster, on Friday.

Ex-MPs Mark Reckless and Neil Hamilton, and Mr Farage's head of media Alexandra Phillips, are all applying to stand as regional list candidates, who are elected using a form of proportional representation.

The names on those lists - UKIP's best chance of winning its first-ever seats in Cardiff Bay - will be picked by a central committee, rather than local UKIP branches.

Mark Reckless is amongst those from outside Wales seeking to become AMs

But Mr Farage said: "We've got representatives from the national party and from Wales making those selections.

"We're much newer; you know, the Labour Party have been standing for over a century, they know their people before they make the selections. We're very much newer.

"Five years ago in Wales UKIP hardly existed; now we've got a whole load of new people, and what we've chosen to do is go through a proper, professional vetting process, so we can put people before the electorate that we know will be good representatives."

He said any UKIP AMs elected in May would offer "constructive criticism" and would try to "break up a consensus, a very cosy consensus" in Cardiff Bay.

But Mr Farage said it would be "ridiculous" to discuss any possible post-election deals with other parties with polling day still several months away.

He said: "There are Catalans in Madrid, there are UKIP-ers in Strasbourg, there are SNP types at Westminster who do not believe in the existence of those chambers at all.

"We do believe that Wales needs the right devolved settlement and, yes, we will play our constructive part."

Nathan Gill says that 'without a doubt, next year is going to be our year'

Commenting on the selection of candidates for the regional lists, UKIP's Welsh leader Nathan Gill admitted voters might be put off by non-Welsh candidates.

He told BBC Radio Wales: "Without a doubt in Wales that is a factor, we've got to take that into consideration.

"We're trying to get together not individuals elected but a team elected, and it's important for us that we get the right team for Wales."

Mr Gill said UKIP Wales would like to be left to itself, without interference from London, "to some extent" but "the reality is that we are a UK independence party, there has to be some give and take".

He said he would be disappointed if UKIP won fewer than five assembly seats, and predicted the party might win as many as seven.