Britain’s police are ill-equipped to deal with child abuse investigations, a child protection charity cautioned yesterday.

The NSPCC issued a warning to the police forces in England and Wales after details from a Freedom of Information request revealed a lack of officers trained to combat paedophilia.

Despite growing numbers of cases requiring technicians to go through thousands of seized computers and hardware, there are only a handful of officers per force available for the job.

In the last 12 months alone there were over 2,000 arrests linked to downloading, possessing or distributing child pornography.

Nspcc lead for tackling sexual abuse Jon Brown argued that 181 specialists dealing with around 5,000 confiscated devices is simply not enough.

“Ultimately what we need is an approach that cuts this material off at the source,” said Mr Brown.

“But until then, relevant authorities must ensure that staffing numbers are at a level to be able to deal with this and prioritise accordingly, so swift action can be taken and children are not put at risk.”

Data collected by the NSPCC also showed that Lancashire police collected the highest number of computers for analysis last year, yet had only three officers working on them.

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper branded the situation “extremely worrying.”

She criticised Home Secretary Theresa May for failing to “get a grip on this urgently.”

“The government keeps claiming crime is falling and far fewer police are needed,” she said.

“The truth is that crime is changing and the police and Home Office need to operate very differently to keep children safe.”