THE number of children in Bradford Council care who have gone missing has soared by 90 per cent in 12 months.

And child protection experts are increasingly concerned that they are at high risk of being exploited for sex.

A total of 133 children in care were reported missing in 2014/15 compared to 70 in the previous 12 months, and they made up a quarter of all missing children cases.

The shock figures have been revealed in the annual report of the Bradford Safeguarding Children's Board.

Superintendent Vince Firth, who is in charge of safeguarding children at Bradford District Police, said some children were going missing as many as 40 times, and many go to visit what they regard as their "boyfriend or girlfriend" when they are in fact falling into the hands of sexual predators.

Speaking to Bradford Council's executive meeting yesterday, Supt Firth told councillors about how seriously officers took missing children reports by referring to a case where a girl went missing for 12 hours.

He said: "It cost £6,238 in police resources we committed in trying to locate her.

“It was worth every single penny, I might add, but that’s the sort of pressure that demand puts on us.

"When they go missing from home, they are identified as high risk immediately. Some of these children go missing numerous times, 20, 30, 40 times.

“They think they are going to meet their boyfriends or girlfriends but actually they are going to meet people who are abusing them.”

At the same meeting he revealed that there were 203 children deemed to be at risk of sexual exploitation in the district.

The safeguarding report, which will be discussed by the Council's children's services scrutiny committee next Tuesday, says: "Clearly effort needs to be focused on looking at the repeat referrals, especially where we have children running away from care placements on multiple occasions."

It says figures have risen due to a "more proactive" approach in listing children as missing at an earlier stage, a policy adopted last April.

The police have three missing person investigators tasked with overseeing the investigations.

The processing of missing referrals to the police is carried out by Barnardo's Turnaround service, and when children are returned they are interviewed to try to determine why they ran away, and to prevent it happening again.

A Barnardo's spokesman said: "Closer working with our partners in Bradford is enabling us to support young people who go missing and are at risk of child sexual exploitation more effectively.

"In a bid to further strengthen our ways of working, our specialist child sexual exploitation team moved into the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub in May.

"As a result, we are helping more children to escape from this abuse and turn their lives around. Last year we worked directly with 282 children across the city.

“We welcome increased scrutiny into missing children cases. It is a fact that children who go missing from home are at a higher risk of being sexually exploited.”

Councillor Ralph Berry, executive for children's services at Bradford Council, said: "There has been an understanding we needed to make a lot of moves to improve how we deal with missing children and take things more seriously.

"People should not feel reticent or ashamed about reporting a child missing. A few hours can really make all the difference."

On the number of children who repeatedly go missing, he said: "A lot of these children are from very complicated situations and family backgrounds, and it is important we get as much information about them as possible to make sure they don't go missing again."

Councillor Mike Gibbons, Conservative spokesman for children's services, said: "The Council takes every missing child very seriously.

"We should continue to work closely with these children to combat any problems, because they are the most vulnerable and we should be looking after them."

The safeguarding board annual report recommends that more extensive enquiries are made with children once they are returned home and to regularly analyse cases of when children run away so any lessons learned can be shared with partner agencies.

It also states that a new focus on recording children as missing much earlier meant that between April last year and March this year there were 709 referrals to police over missing children, up from 435 the previous year and 232 the year before that.

The report points out that a large number of referrals involve a group of young people who have gone missing multiple times and that in one three month period 25 children generated 51 per cent of all referrals.