An OSWESTRY man who had more than 2,000 indecent images of children on a computer has escaped going to prison.

Paul Hughes, 48, downloaded and kept pictures and videos of children as young as two years old.

Passing sentence at Shrewsbury Crown Court this week, Judge Anthony Lowe warned that the sharing of "vile" child abuse images online would go on until the major internet companies worked together to stamp it out.

He said there needed to be "a concerted effort" worldwide to stop such images being viewed.

Judge Lowe told Hughes he had been viewing real children, who were not fictional and were not acting, who were being subjected to the most vile sexual abuse.

He said it was happening to a child somewhere in the world and viewing the material only fed the production.

Judge Lowe said Hughes deserved to go to prison but believed it would only push him further into isolation and increase the risk of him feeding his "addiction" for indecent material.

"You could have lost your job, lost your relationship and possibly lost your home," he said. "I'm not actually bothered about you losing those things.

"Frankly, you deserve to lose those things for what you did."

Hughes, of Park Street, Oswestry, had been due to stand trial having denied three offences of making indecent images and one of possessing a prohibited image, but changed his pleas to guilty.

He was given a 12-month community order which includes 40 days of rehabilitation activity and 200 hours of unpaid work.

Caroline Harris, prosecuting, said Hughes was arrested in December, 2017, after an account on the social media app Kik Messenger, which was called 'Oswestry Man' and linked to his home IP address, uploaded an indecent image of a child.

Police found material on a phone and a tablet computer, while search terms found on the devices included 'Lolita' and 'schoolgirl'.

Ms Harris said officers found 185 images of category A, depicting the most serious abuse, 196 of category B and 1,763 of category C, on his Samsung phone and Sony tablet.

Stephen Scully, for Hughes, said the likelihood was that if his client was jailed he would lose his relationship.

"There have been difficulties in his relationship because of his offending," he said.