A degenerate who looked at pictures of child porn and people having sex with animals will be sentenced by a judge after magistrates decided they did not have the power to punish him strongly enough.

Selhurst man Derek Eastoe admitted looking at more than 700 indecent images including some of children as young as six and others where adults had sex with animals.

The 66-year-old Hurlstone Road man was due to be sentenced by Croydon magistrates this morning but they decided he would need to go to crown court at a later date as the punishments they could have handed out were not severe enough.

The chairman of the magistrates Su Norwood-Poole said: "We believe these offences are so serious that you deserve greater punishment than we can give and we will commit you to crown court."

Magistrates can only give prison sentences of six months for single offences or up to one year for multiple offences.

Marsha Elias, prosecuting, told the court Eastoe had looked at more than 200 images of people having sex with animals although this was disputed by the defence who said it was only 58.

Defence lawyer Andy Floyd said Eastoe had not downloaded any of the images he looked at to his computer, did not distribute them and was not part of a network which shared illegal images. He added: "He didn't pay. he went into internet sites and looked at images but didn't click on them or download them. He is not a registered member of any pornographic sites.

"Furthermore, there is no suggestion he tried to hide his tracks - there is no software downloaded to his computer designed to hide it."

Eastoe will appear at Croydon Crown Court at a date to be arranged.