ALMOST 30 Essex children were targeted with sexual messages in the first six months of a new law. 

Across the country, the NSPCC said 1,300 offences of sexual communication with a child were recorded since police were given the power to intervene before groomers met with their victims. 

Essex Police say 27 of those offences took place in the county. 

Detective Chief Inspector Jon Burgess, from the Essex Police crime and public protection section, said: “Protecting children is a top priority for Essex Police and those who choose to abuse them will be caught and will be dealt with.

“We will always use the tools available to us to keep children safe and any legislation which helps to identify and arrest offenders is welcome.

“This change in the law allows us to get to offenders before any physical contact with a child is made.

“We are always looking for ways we can improve our ability to identify abusers trying to groom children online and are currently working with software developers to help improve the algorithms they use to allow the early detection of offenders.

“We have specialist teams working in this area, dedicated to keeping our county’s children safe, including the Child Abuse Investigation Team (CAIT), the Operation Gloucester team, which is a specialist team of extra officers who use an intelligence-led approach to target those involved in child abuse imagery offences, and the Police Online Investigation Team (POLIT).”

The NSPCC has called for the government to take action on social network firms, which would require "safe accounts" for anyone aged under 18.

Those accounts would be fitted with "grooming alerts". 

The charity believes a "code rather than a voluntary wishlist" is the only way to police the social networks. 

An NSPCC spokesman said: "Voluntary isn’t good enough. It needs to be mandatory, and overseen by an independent regulator.

"If social networks don’t follow the code, there must be fines.

"The code must force social networks to publish data on child endangerment reports, response times and action taken, so it’s clear when they’ve fallen short."