Nearly 400 convicted sex offenders have disappeared from across the UK, according to police records.

The revelations are the result of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by the Press Association (PA), and show that 394 sex offenders are currently wanted by 39 police forces because their whereabouts are unknown.

Convicted sex offenders are required to inform the authorities about their current address so that they can be monitored, but hundreds have failed to do so and police have not been able to trace them.

The Metropolitan Police is seeking 167 missing sex offenders, the most from any single police force, with some of the offenders missing for up to a decade.

A number of those missing are believed to have moved abroad, or if they were foreign residents they may have moved back to their country of origin.