Yorkshire nears top of brothels league as more women forced into prostitution

It says at least 2,600 women have been trafficked into England and Wales and forced to work as prostitutes, with London showing the highest figure at 2,103.

The figures came in a report by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), the first of its kind to reveal the scale of the crime.

It followed a two-year study aimed at improving understanding of the nature and scale of the trafficking of foreign nationals for sex, known as Project Acumen.

Police found 17,000 of the 30,000 women involved in the off-street sex trade are migrants, mostly from China, Thailand and Eastern Europe.

The report, called Setting the Record, was co-ordinated over 12 months by a team in south west England, supported by the Metropolitan Police.

Investigators interviewed more than 200 women to find out more about their circumstances.

They found the sex industry was made up of 6,000 premises where the majority of women were trafficked or were coerced by cultural, financial or other factors.

Police admitted the findings were incomplete estimates that may miss brothels that advertised in other languages or only accepted clients by invitation.

Some studies suggested the 2012 Olympics will fuel a rise in the number of migrant sex workers but a senior officer said there was no noticeable change in the number of prostitutes in the four Olympic boroughs so far.