A PAEDOPHILE councillor who arranged to engage in sex acts with a fictional three-year-old girl, saying he had waited "years for something like this to happen", has been jailed.

Alex Kear, 50, thought he was meeting the mother of a toddler after sending her indecent requests but the woman was an undercover police officer, Leeds Crown Court heard yesterday.

Kear - who will now lose his seat as an independent on Wakefield Council - was jailed for four years and ordered to serve an extended licence period of two years due to him posing "a high risk of serious harm to children".

Judge Simon Phillips QC told him: "I have no doubt that if that three-year-old girl had existed you would have intended to carry out your degenerate predatory plans against her.

"This is a deep-seated degeneracy on your behalf, as illustrated by the communications you have made that you have been interested in little girls for as long as you can remember and that you have waited years for something like this to happen."

Kear admitted last month to a charge of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sexual offence and another of inciting the sexual exploitation of a child under the age of 13.

At the time, Wakefield Council said it was frustrated it could not remove him from his position as a councillor because the law said this can only be done when defendants are jailed for three months or more.

Judge Phillips was told how, over the period of a month, Kear sent a picture of his genitals to the officer he thought was the child's mother along with depraved messages about what he wanted to do to the youngster.

According to Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, Kear said: "The older I get the younger I seem to like. Twenty years ago I would never had thought about a baby but now... young."

Mr Sharp said the defendant met with the undercover police officer and had agreed to meet again with the fictional three-year-old on August 19, 2019.

But he was arrested three days before.

Kear had told the undercover officer: "The years I have waited for something like this to happen."

Michael Collins, defending, told the judge his client welcomed his arrest as he needed help with a long standing addiction to pornography.

He said Kear, of Stansfield Drive, Castleford, had been diagnosed with autism and was also suffering from a mixed anxiety and depressive disorder.

Wakefield Council confirmed Kear is now disqualified from his post as a councillor for the Airedale and Ferry Fryston ward in Castleford.

Gillian Marshall, Wakefield Council’s chief legal officer, said: “Following his conviction, Alex Kear has been automatically disqualified from his post as a councillor. This post is now vacant and there will be a by-election at some point in the future.”

The NSPCC responded to the sentencing in a statement. It read: "Kear’s sickening determination to abuse a three-year-old shows he is clearly a serious danger to children.

“While Kear has been jailed and his former position of authority and respect lies in tatters, his experience is incomparable to sexual abuse, which can ruin childhoods and leave survivors with mental and emotional scars which could last a lifetime.

“His actions also highlight how sexual predators can use the internet for their own horrific means, and just how important it is that the Government and major tech companies do more to ensure strong regulation and legislation cracks down on this kind of activity, to protect children from paedophiles like Kear, and ensure they face the justice they deserve.”

Yvette Cooper, MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, called for an urgent review of the law following Kear's conviction.

She said: "This was a truly awful crime and it is terrible to think of the impact on children from cases like this.

"The sentence also means that the perpetrator can finally be removed from Wakefield Council.

"But given how serious the offence was, Wakefield Council should have been allowed to suspend him as soon as he was charged and to remove him completely as soon as he pleaded guilty.

"The law on this doesn't work, and I am calling on the Government to change it so that councils can take immediate action in a case like this.

"Children's safety must be the absolute priority."