330 arrested in sex offenders blitz

"Child protection is everybody's business and we should afford our children the same protection online that we would give them in the park or playground - - that is our approach and that collective response has already hit home."

More than 330 people have been arrested by officers targeting the UK's highest-risk sex offenders in the last year, figures have showed.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) unit, which runs a "most wanted" website as part of its work, has arrested more than 700 suspected offenders since its launch three years ago and helped save nearly 350 children, 139 in the last 12 months alone.

A CEOP spokesman said it had also helped dismantle or disrupt 166 networks of offenders since 2006, 82 in the last year, but warned that tactics being deployed by those who target children were also evolving.

Jim Gamble, chief executive of the CEOP Centre, said it was "easy to be alarmist" and suggest that "technology is opening doors for offenders to abuse children quicker than we can close them".

But he went on: "This is not about technology - this is about people. There is no distinction between the online and offline worlds. This is about the behaviour of offenders manipulating any environment to abuse children.

"Child protection is everybody's business and we should afford our children the same protection online that we would give them in the park or playground - - that is our approach and that collective response has already hit home."

A total of 334 suspected child sex offenders have been arrested for offences ranging from possession of indecent images to rape in the last year, CEOP said.

The figures, published in the organisation's annual review for 2008/09 and covering work specifically involving CEOP teams, showed grooming was still the number one offence reported to the centre.

But whereas before this was done primarily through instant messaging, there is a "fast-growing trend" of exploiting children through vast, integrated social networking sites, a CEOP spokesman said.

The organisation also found an average of four reports a day needed immediate action as a result of a child being at risk.