A disgraced former long-serving police officer has admitted downloading more than 21,000 child sex abuse images.

Tonbridge-based Max Holway left the force in March last year “due to issues in relation to looking at pornography on the Kent Police system”, Maidstone Crown Court was told today.

The 54-year-old ex-Detective Inspector admitted three offences of possessing indecent photos of children on July 25 last year – 24 in the next to highest category of seriousness of B and 21,824 in the lowest category of C. There were also 30 indecent movie clips in category C.

Prosecutor Abigail White said Holway, of Boyne Park, Tunbridge Wells, took a laptop he bought on eBay into a computer store in the town and said it had been “blue screening”.

As staff took out the hard drive, warning alerts appeared in relation to the indecent images.

“The prosecution case is the images were put on the laptop by the defendant,” said Miss White. “At the time he did that he was looking at images in relation to young children.”

Police officers went to Holway’s home on July 27 last year and carried out a search.

He initially claimed a lodger had access to the computer and that a USB stick had been used to transfer photos from a party to the laptop. No indecent images were found on the USB stick.

Miss White said the material involved “professional images” believed to be from the Ukraine. The ages of the children were being sought.

Judge Martin Joy said adjourning for a report until April 27 was no indication of what the sentence would be.

Holway, whose LinkedIn page states he was a police officer for 26 years, was granted bail, conditional on residence.