THE mayor of an East Yorkshire town has been cleared of kerb-crawling.

Paul Rounding, the mayor of Driffield, was arrested last October when two undercover police officers saw him with a female prostitute in his car in Hull's red light district.

The 55-year-old was found not guilty at Hull Magistrates' Court after he told the hearing he had been looking for a parking space when he went to buy a pizza.

He denied claims by officers from Humberside Police's sexual exploitation unit that they had seen a sex worker taling to him through the passenger window of his car, saying he was "taken aback" when the girl got into the vehicle.

Mr Rounding, of The Horseshoe, Driffield, said she had asked him three times if he wanted "business", and on each occasion he had told her to get out. He was subsequently charged with soliciting another person for the purposes of obtaining sexual services.

But chairman of the bench Brian Collins told him: "We believe the accounts given by the police officers to be correct.

"However, taking into account all the circumstances based on the evidence of the case, we can't be sure beyond all reasonable doubt there was a positive act of soliciting. We therefore find you not guilty."