A convicted sex offender who ‘blatantly disregarded’ court orders has been jailed.

Kristian Kirk, formerly of Oswaldtwistle, was made subject to police notification requirements for five years in 2015 after pleading guilty to attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence and a separate offence of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

He was given a 26-week jail sentence, suspended for 12 months, with a supervision and programme requirement.

Under the notification conditions the 26-year-old was required to tell police if he was staying at an address where there was a person under 18 also residing. Burnley Crown Court heard how police later attended an address and found a person under 18 there.

However when officers originally asked Kirk how old she was he ‘tried to lie about her age’ and gave them a date of birth which would have made her over 18, the court heard.

Kirk has admitted failing to comply with a sexual offenders notification.

The court heard how this was the second time Kirk had breached his suspended sentence order and was previously jailed for seven days in May 2016.

Sentencing, Judge Beverley Lunt said: “The only way to comply with a suspended sentence order is to not offend. You have blatantly disregarded that suspended sentence, not just once but twice.

“May last year was your wake up call if you didn’t want to go to prison.

“That you offended after that is just your fault. You made that decision and you disregarded yet again a court order that’s in place to protect members of the public from you.

“You aggravated your guilt by the fact that when you were caught red-handed by the police you tried to lie about this girl’s age and that was not helpful at all. But that was the extent of your obstruction.

“This suspended sentence must now be activated.”

Darren Lee-Smith, defending, said Kirk deserved full credit for his early guilty plea and for his ‘excellent compliance’ with the probation service.

He told the court: “There was no attempt to close the door on the officers or prevent them from gaining entry to the premises.

"They were allowed unrestricted access and there was no attempt to argue that the lady had not been at the address for a period of less than 12 hours.”