The County Mall, in Crawley, West Sussex, is the first place in the UK to introduce the pilot Child Safe Zones initiative.

The scheme, which registers children's description and a photograph, aims to alert the authorities to cases of missing children as quickly as possible.

For an annual fee of �10, parents will be given an individual identification number for their child and a freephone number to call.

Extra eyes

When a child goes missing, co-ordinators will alert security staff at the shopping centre and authorities around the town and county within 10 minutes.

Sue Fairley, from Child Safe Zones, said: "If a parent loses a child whilst they are shopping the window stickers we have published will put them straight through to the security team and the CCTV operators so they have extra eyes looking for them almost immediately.

"The system is very secure . The parent must authorise before anyone can access a visual image.

"They are passport photographs and in addition to that there are no address details attached to the children."

The initiative is one of a number of new child safety schemes to have been launched in recent years.

The Child Rescue Alert project, set up last November, sends a text alert to thousands of mobile phone users across East and West Sussex as soon a child has been abducted.