But it’s safe for us here

thinks I work in a strip bar. He doesn’t agree with it. My first [punter] was really sweet and now I can earn £450 a night. I’m good at it. I’ve been out in snow shivering but I made £1,000 that night because they felt sorry for me.”

Many street workers congregate on Holbeck Lane under the scrutiny of half a dozen CCTV cameras. The area is littered with pink condoms, given to the girls by a local charity.

A makeshift bed – an old massage table – lies in waste ground nearby surrounded by condoms and human excrement. “They complain about the condoms but don’t provide bins,” said a 36-year-old, clutching her silver heels to give her aching feet a break. “I bring nappy sacks with me.”

She said she had been a sex worker for 15 years and had entertained some 30,000 men at a rate of up to 20 a night. She said: “We need these cameras to protect us. I’ve got called a slag – I’m not a slag, I get paid for it.

“I had six eggs thrown at me the other day and one hit me on the head.”

She admits working the streets to feed her crack cocaine habit.

A Romanian aged 23 told how she boosts her £270-a-month factory wage by coming to the zone twice a week.

She has been in the UK for five years and said: “I feel safe because of the CCTV cameras and police. There are some men I’m scared of.”

Another woman, who is with her, discreetly nods at a middle-aged man in a Volkswagen car who has been parked up watching the girls all night.

She said: “He owns half the girls on this street. He supplies them with cocaine and they pay him. He’s got six women under his control. But not me.”