‘SEXTING’ between underage children has contributed to a huge rise in reports to a specialist hub investigating child abuse, Council bosses heard.

Superintendent Damien Miller, of Bradford’s specialist child sexual exploitation hub, said if young children had swapped indecent images of themselves by phone or on the internet, “that’s now classed as an offence”.

He said: “That has led to an increasing number of reports.”

He said as a result, they had brought in six Police Community Support Officers to educate young people about the law.

Supt Miller said an increase in public confidence about reporting child abuse had also seen “a massive increase of referrals” to the hub.

He said: “I think we have got to see that as a positive. Sometimes, when you see figures increasing, that can be seen as a negative, but for me that’s a positive.”

The Council’s Executive heard today that there had been a 61 per cent rise in the number of suspected child sexual exploitation (CSE) cases reported to the hub in the space of a year.

In 2016-17, there were also 367 crimes recorded by police, up 34 per cent on the previous 12 months.

The annual report to council bosses covered a period of time during which the district has seen two serious case reviews into how the authorities handled child abuse cases.

One involved a girl who was repeatedly raped by a street grooming gang in Keighley when she was 13 and 14, in 2011 and 2012. Twelve men were subsequently jailed but police and social services apologised after the review found they had failed to protect the young victim at the time.

The other involved the online grooming and abuse of a boy from 2010 to 2015 by men from around the country who did not know each other. Eventually, a police operation led to 20 men being convicted.

The meeting heard there had been extensive efforts to get people working in the nighttime economy to spot signs of abuse.

Councillors were told of a case in which a taxi driver realised his teenage passenger was on the way to meet a man she had met online in a Bradford hotel. He called the police, who stepped in to safeguard the girl.

Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said the driver “deserves a medal”.