A JUDGE has expressed her ‘amazement’ after Lancashire Police decided it was not cost-effective to analyse a child porn convict’s mobile phone.

Under the terms of a sexual offences prevention order, 49-year-old Paul Bielby’s access to the internet is strictly monitored.

And so when police checked up on Bielby at his home in Mowbray Avenue, Blackburn, they rang what they believed was his mobile phone in the street outside.

But when they went into his house, prosecutor Mark Lamberty told Burnley Crown Court, it became apparent that he had a second handset upstairs.

Bielby was arrested and charged with breaching a sexual offences prevention order for having the phone. He was originally jailed for eight months in 2003 after being caught with 1,380 indecent images of children.

An earlier court hearing saw Judge Norman Wright ask for the second mobile phone to be analysed by police, to see whether it had been used to access the internet.

But Mr Lamberty said the attitude of the police had been that it was neither financially viable or ‘proportionate’ to check the phone.

Judge Heather Lloyd said: “The message can go back to the police that the defendant will therefore be sentence on the basis that he has not used it. I find their attitude amazing.

“It may well be there is nothing there and that would confirm what the defendant says. It may well be that there was plenty to find in which case it would have been in the public interest and important for any police officer to investigate.”

Interviewed by police, Bielby said he had owned the second mobile since his 2003 conviction .

Martin Hackett, defending, said he had kept the second mobile phone because he had a contract which granted him a number of free texts.

He used this phone to contact his sister about the care of their elderly mother, added Mr Hackett.

“He realises that he should not have had the mobile telephone. At first he put it in a drawer and then these problems arose and he used it on a very limited basis,” said Mr Hackett.

Bielby, who admitted breaching a sexual offences prevention order and breaching a suspended sentence, was given 12 months supervision by Judge Lloyd .