DORSET Police has said it does not know the whereabouts of three convicted sex offenders.

The unnamed offenders have failed to provide information about their current addresses, which is a requirement of the Sex Offenders Act.

A spokesperson from the force also said there are currently 612 registered sex offenders living in the county as of last year, all of whom are known to the police.

The force initially failed to reveal how many sex offenders were missing from the county following a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Press Association.

It was one of just three in the UK which had not provided figures after requests were made to all forces, and figures provided by 38 of them revealed 391 sex offenders are wanted nationally.

Some have been missing for more than a decade.

All forces provided information apart from West Yorkshire, which said more time was needed, and Dorset and Staffordshire, from which there was no reply.

But yesterday, a spokesperson from Dorset Police said: “Registered sex offenders have an obligation to say where they are living under the requirements of the Sex Offenders Act.

“Dorset Police currently has enquiries ongoing in relation to the whereabouts of three registered sex offenders who have either failed to say where they are living or who have registered at an address where they are no longer residing.

“There were 612 registered sex offenders in Dorset as of March 31 2014 as per the published figures in the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) report on the Dorset Police website.”

One convicted sex offender in Gloucestershire has been missing since the year 2000, another in Northumbria disappeared in May 2002, while Humberside Police said the whereabouts of one registered sex offender has been unknown since September 2004.

Registered sex offenders - including rapists and paedophiles - are required to inform police and probation officers of their addresses.

Every force to respond refused to name those missing over concerns of vigilante attacks or because the information was exempt under data protection laws.

Sara Payne, whose daughter Sarah was abducted and killed in 2000 by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting, said: ''It's completely unacceptable that any registered sex offenders have disappeared from authority management, putting the public at risk.

''It's time to take some serious pro-active action to bring them back under the police radar.''