A VALE businessman hopes to put the popularity of mobile text messaging to good use by helping to trace missing children.

Prompted both by the recent brief disappearance of his own child and in the light of the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, Nick Seller, of Harvington, has developed an internet website which can locate children through texting.

Mr Seller, who runs eazytext.com, an internet-based text messaging business, had the idea for the dedicated child tracing service after one of his own children, Luke, aged 12, disappeared for a few hours.

He has created his own version, which stores all the names and mobile phone numbers of his children's friends, so they can be alerted should any of them go missing.

"I was looking for my son and I couldn't find him for three hours," said Mr Seller, "I knew he was in the village but I was getting a bit stressed.

"Eventually, he turned up but kids have dens and things like that, so they could be anywhere but 99% of 10-year-old-plus children have mobile phones. Certainly, all Luke's friends have got mobile phones, as has 58% of western Europe.

"In light of what happened in Soham, if it could just reduce the risk of something like that happening again, then it's got to be worth it."

If someone does go missing, a message is sent out from the website, which is only entered by using a security code. The message is sent to all the phones and alerts the children that a child is missing.

Mr Seller is now hoping to get Government funding for the project and hopes that councils and schools will contact him to help develop their own service.

"We've already approached the local authorities and various other people and everyone seems to like what we're doing," he explained.

"It's a really simplistic way of communication and gives people a bit more peace of mind over their children's whereabouts. Children are much more observant than the older generation and, if one of them should go missing, you can send out a message and - instantly - the children on the database will know that someone has disappeared.

"It would be nice if we could get the scheme running nationally and that all villages, towns and councils would have their own site."

For more information on the child tracing texting service contact Mr Seller on 01386 871418.