An internet service claiming to be the first ever to provide complete protection for children from offensive online material has been launched in the South.

The new internet service provider (ISP), V21, has been created by ex-care worker Kevin Baigent, who has worked with children's homes across the country, including Sussex care services.

He said: "As a care worker, I saw how devious paedophiles could be and how quickly they saw the potential for using the internet to their advantage.

"Two years ago, I decided I had to do something to protect children online and began to develop a search engine to filter out adult content from the internet and things have snowballed.

"We have set up an ISP with an independent browser and a dedicated team of staff watching all content passing through our system to check that, with our service, the internet is a safe place for children to explore.

"We guarantee this service will protect children from finding pornographic images as they surf, send emails or use our chat room.

"This is not about limiting freedom of speech. People can put whatever they like on the internet but that doesn't mean parents, teachers and schools want the children in their care to have unlimited access to it. There are top-shelf magazines which anyone can buy but we wouldn't put them in children's bedrooms."

The service offers a flat-rate fee for connection to the internet, using filtering software designed specifically for the company.

Steve Kaye, a partner in V21, said: "Our software was produced by an experienced programmer who has worked with all the main players in this field, such as Microsoft, Netscape and AOL.

"It has been set up to ban all adult content at all times and to update the information. The browser has two main functions, to check new online destinations and bar addresses known to be offensive.

"When a search is made, it can recognise and refuse to download suggested pages which have banned keywords. It will not ban partial words but looks at them as a whole, for example the word 'Sussex' would not be stopped because of 'sex', which has happened with previous filtering systems.

"Sites which the software identifies as offensive are put into a holding pattern so we can check them in person before banning them altogether, if necessary. A person might search one day and have no successful results but, behind the scenes, there might have been several sites which needed to be approved before allowing them through the system.

"The same search inquiry the next day might yield the requested information. The browser also denies access to web addresses we have already identified as inappropriate for children. This list on our server is added to continuously and the browsers are automatically updated every four to six seconds while they are connected."

V21 operates an online chat service but does not allow access to chat rooms across the web.

Mr Kaye said: "Chat rooms are one area where we know people have congregated to abuse the anonymity of the internet. We operate a chat room service where users have a protected environ-ment. We employ staff to monitor the communications, to effectively patrol for bad behaviour, which we will put a stop to. The same goes for email through our service. We have people in place to check the content is not detrimental for young users."

The V21 software has been designed to prevent "sideways" access to inappropriate web content using other applications. The V21 browser bars other browsers, without the V21 filter, from starting up once it has been installed to a computer.

The ISP will become operational for users in Sussex and Hampshire from May 3. The company is based in Southampton and plans to roll out the service across the south coast, ahead of launching nationally later in this year.

www.v21.co.uk