A MAN who repeatedly failed to sign the sex offenders register because he was homeless has been handed a community penalty.

Shaun Buchan was previously made subject to notification requirements of the register, including weekly 'signing on.'

The 31-year-old of no fixed abode appeared at Oxford Crown Court yesterday after admitting breaching this order by failing to sign twice.

Buchan failed to sign the register at St Aldate's police station, Oxford, once on March 21 and again on June 5.

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The court heard that for each breach his homelessness had made it difficult to give officers an appropriate address.

Judge Peter Ross said: "The offending in a sense was almost inevitable by virtue of your homelessness, and exacerbated by your alcohol problem.

"You were not in a position to provide a long term address to the police and therefore, and this may come as a surprise to others, there was a requirement that you must inform the police every seven days where you were living.

"The best you could do was a tent in a church yard up in Cowley.

"The cycle of offending has to be broken, that is what this sentence is all about, breaking this cycle of offending by dealing with your alcohol problems."

Buchan was handed a community order for three years.

As part of that order he was made subject to a two-year residential alcohol treatment requirement. That treatment will take place at Yeldall Manor in Berkshire.

Judge Ross said to Buchan: "It is a hard road you have to walk now [...] but you will never get this chance again."