AROUND two thirds of children who go missing in West Yorkshire are girls, police records show.

During 2013/14 there were more than 1,500 cases of children aged under 18 reported missing, with almost 70 per cent of those being female.

Around a quarter of the females who went missing were regarded as being at risk of child sexual exploitation.

Within Bradford, there were 212 girls who went missing and 109 boys, with another four where gender was not recorded by police.

Of those, 63 girls were regarded as being vulnerable to child sexual exploitation.

Numbers of child protection case conferences in Bradford, which met the force’s timescale, rose in the year to 258 from the previous total of 241, though across the force the figure was down by 8.8 per cent, with the performance in Leeds affecting the force statistics.