Lancashire Constabulary has warned we may see fewer officers patrolling the streets as it looks to make another £20m of cuts.

As part of a series of features on the police, crime reporter Jessica Cree met the head of public protection, inspector Paul Barlow, to investigate the work that goes on in the units the public doesn’t often see.

POLICE are working hard to safeguard youngsters in East Lancashire and to stop them becoming victims of sexual exploitation (CSE).

A top officer in the public protection team — a specialised unit set up target crimes against vulnerable members of society including children, sex crimes, paedophilia, abuse of trust and domestic abuse — said there were around 10 children on their radar who needed the force’s imminent protection.

And whereas in the past there may have been lots more victims hidden in an underworld that had not come to the attention of the police, he said he believed investigators were now really getting under the surface of the issue.

Det Insp Paul Barlow said the specialised unit had more information than ever on exploitation and that police had learnt lessons from the Rochdale grooming scandal.

Paedophiles convicted of running the exploitation ring brought vulnerable girls as young as 13 to Nelson and Colne to be abused.

The inspector said that since the scandal had been brought to light, more sexual predators had been identified in East Lancashire.

He said: “There are always going to be more offenders when you lift the lid on an issue.

“If we do what we have to do and follow everything up and are more intrusive, we will find something.

“But I would like to think that the ones we need to be concerned about, the predators, we already know. Howver, we are not just there for criminal investigations now. It is more around safeguarding.”

The officer said risk assessments were put in place every time a child went missing, meaning they could monitor how likely the youngster was to be sexually exploited.

Instead of simply being ‘debriefed’ by an officer when they are taken home, they now meet with a multi-agency team, including children's charities and support workers, to find the root of the problem.

Det Insp Barlow said the young victims, who are as likely to be from Asian families as white, would often repeatedly run away from home on the promise of receiving gifts such as mobile phones, money, food, drugs and alcohol. They would then be sexually assaulted.

He said: “There is a massive link between children being missing from home and CSE.

“It used to be that when a child was found an officer would speak to them and that would be it.

“But now a child worker will go to them and find out exactly why that child went missing.

“It is really about finding out what is going on with that child, recognising which ones need to be prioritised and which ones are being exploited. However, there are very few situations we come across when a child has not entered the arena before at all.”

The detective said the Rochdale grooming scandal had focused investigators’ minds, with more funding being made available to prevent similar things happening again.

The team now works much more closely with social services and organisations like the Children’s Society, Barnardo’s and the Prince’s Trust to identify potential victims and stop them becoming involved.

Det Insp Barlow said: "It would be naive to say exploitation like what happened in Rochdale did not happen here. But I do not think it could happen again. Now everybody gets involved with CSE because it affects so many police departments.

“When the Rochdale problems got highlighted, more resources got put into tackling them. It means that now we are highlighting things at such an early stage that sometimes there can appear to be more of a problem than there is because of the proactive nature of it.”

A particular difficulty the team has is bringing prosecutions as more often than not, the victims do not consider themselves to have been exploited.

Det Insp Barlow said the unit’s biggest challenge looking into the future was making sure the public protection team, which was recently centralised at Greenbank Police Station in Blackburn as part of the force’s cost cutting programme, gelled together well.

He added that the team would continue to make it as hard as possible for paedophiles to target children.