An Ipswich businessman has appeared in court charged with outraging public decency, making more than 15,000 indecent images of children and having extreme pornography.

Timothy Church, of Whitton Church Lane, Ipswich made his first appearance on the 11 charges before South East Suffolk Magistrates’ Court.

The company director is accused of two counts of outraging public decency on or before October 14 last year.

The 46-year-old is alleged to have behaved in an indecent manner by “filming up the skirts of unsuspecting female shoppers in the supermarket”.

One of the charges relates to 17 images on an Apple laptop. The other is said to involve an unspecified number of images on a Apple iPhone 6.

Church also faces six accusations of making indecent photographs of a child.

The total number of images amount to just over 15,400 and include more than 150 movies.

In excess of 5,000 of these are classified as Level A – the most serious grading for child pornography images.

The six charges allegedly involve images found on two hard drives, a pink USB stick, an Apple laptop, and two silver IMacs.

All the alleged offences occurred on or before October 14.

The final three accusations are that Church possessed extreme pornography involving dogs and horses. These are said to be on the IMacs and one of the hard drives.

During a hearing lasting less than 10 minutes the charges were read out to Church.

The court was told he would not be giving an indication of plea at this stage to any of allegations.

Prosecutor Corrinne Gook-Hurren said: “The Crown would say this matter is not suitable for summary trial so the matter should go to the crown court.”

Church was told his case was being sent to Ipswich Crown Court.

His next hearing was scheduled for July 26.

Church was released on conditional bail.