A 34-year-old man who groomed and carried out sexual activity with a Shropshire teenager after she put her details on a modelling website has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.

David Blundell admitted meeting a child following sexual grooming on September 8 last year. He also admitted two charges of sexual activity with a child and two charges of taking indecent photographs of a child on the same date.

At Shrewsbury Crown Court yesterday he was sentenced to two years for the sexual activity and six months for each of the remaining three charges to run concurrently, but consecutively to the two-year sentence.

He was also placed on the sex offenders register and barred from working with children or entering website chatrooms.

The court was told the girl, aged 15 at the time of the incident, had published her details on a website called Net Models, in the hope she would be able to become a model.

Mr Phillip Lowe, prosecuting, said Blundell, of Epping Drive, Warrington, Cheshire, contacted the girl and they arranged to meet in Telford Town Centre on September 8.

He said: “The defendant drove from his then home address in Sussex to meet the girl in Telford Town Centre and he took her to the Days Inn Hotel, Shifnal, for a photoshoot.”

Mr John Burton, for Blundell, said the 63 images taken during the meeting were destroyed immediately by the defendant following the incident as he did not intend to pass them on or publish them in any way.

They had to be recovered by forensic officers. He said Blundell had an interest in professional photography.

Mr Burton added: “He was perhaps naive and mentally and emotionally younger than his 33 years at the time of the offences.