Kent's police and crime commissioner says more needs to be done to tackle sexual harassment within the police force.

His comments follow a survey carried out by trade union Unison, which revealed the scale of the problem nationally.

Respondents reported inappropriate touching, explicit messages and staff pressurised into having sex with colleagues.

Matthew Scott has called on the National Police Chiefs' Council to act immediately in order to deal with the problem.

He said: "Kent Police has a very good culture, it does a lot to support its workforce.

"I would be very disappointed to hear if anybody in this organisation felt in the way that the respondents to this survey did."

Police community support officers, crime scene investigators, clerks, fingerprint experts and detention officers were among the 1,776 staff members who took part in the survey.

The report, published earlier today, did not take into account the experiences of police officers.

The findings, analysed by researchers at the London School of Economics, showed around half of those questioned had heard sexualised jokes being told repeatedly at work.

Around one in five had received a sexually explicit email or text from a colleague, or been touched in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.

Shockingly, 4% of police staff reported being pressurised into having sex with colleagues, with 8% told that sexual favours could result in preferential treatment.

Mr Scott said: "The survey results for Kent need to be looked at to understand what the issue is.

"I will want to look at those results locally, and engage further with the union to see if they want to highlight any particular issues with me.

"If there are any instances, I'm confident that our chief constable, who takes these issues extremely seriously, will do all he can to support his staff."

In the vast majority of cases, the report found that colleagues - either police officers or staff - had instigated the harassment.

LSE researchers also found that, the more serious the harassment, the less likely it was that it would be reported.