ExPKCofficerwhohadindecent picture of a child escapes jail

A former council planning officer, caught with an indecent photograph of a child on his phone, was spared jail when he appeared for sentence at Perth Sheriff Court this week.

Instead, 62-year-old Blair Alexander Melville, of Gallowhill Road, Kinross, had a Community Payback Order imposed and will have to take part in the Tay Project, designed to rehabilitate sex offenders.

He will participate in a three-yearlong‘Moving Forward - Making Changes’programme and will be supervised by a social worker during that time.

A stringent set of conditions relating to his future behaviour has been imposed and his use of devices which have access to the internet will be monitored.

The accused, who has a previous conviction from November, 2008, at Dunfermline Sheriff Court for a sexually aggravated breach of the peace, also had his name added to the Sex Offenders’Register for three years.

Melville, who was given two years’ probation in January, 2009, for the earlier offence, admitted taking, or permitting to be taken or making the indecent image at his home on May 9, 2015.

The court was told that Police Scotland obtained a search warrant for his home after receiving “intelligence”that a device connected to his address had accessed an indecent image of a child.

Depute fiscal Tina Dickie said: “That led to the recovery and examination of a mobile telephone belonging to the accused.”

It was later found to contain one Category C image.

Solicitor Sarah Meehan said her client’s offending behaviour seemed to have been linked to what was described as“personal difficulties”.

He would benefit from further social work intervention and would be willing to comply with the court order, the court was told.

He had previously been“highly regarded”in both his personal and professional life.

Sheriff Gillian Wade said she was prepared to follow the recommendations of a background report and Tay Project assessment and impose the Community Payback Order which she reminded him was a “direct alternative”to a prison sentence.

The accused’s phone was ordered to be forfeited.

Melville worked as a planner at Perth and Kinross Council for five-and-a-half years and at the former Tayside Regional Council for 17 years before becoming head of planning strategy at industry body Homes for Scotland in 2002.

He stepped down from that post in 2015 before joining planning consultancyTurley.