In the past five years 14 people have been arrested in the borough on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.

Surrey Police confirmed, following a Freedom of Information request, between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2014, only four people had been charged for this offence.

Those arrested and subsequently, those who were then charged, were all male and ranged in age from 44 to 77.

Jon Brown, NSPCC lead on tackling sexual abuse, said: "Although this figure may not seem high, it is still significant. Viewing these appalling images creates a market for them, and children suffer horrific abuse for these images to be created.

"If there was no market for this material children would not suffer and their lives would not be seriously damaged. To tackle this problem, we need a solution that cuts this material off at the source."

Responding to these figures, the force said it has a joint dedicated Paedophile Online Investigation Team with Sussex Police which deals specifically with offending such as possession and making of indecent images of children.

A spokesman said: "Every case is assessed on its own merits and matters which are considered include the level of category and number of images, whether the offender has any previous history of sexual offences, whether they are engaging with a support/counselling facility, whether they took or distributed images, whether the victim is known to them, whether they have access to children or hold a position of responsibility and whether the public interest threshold for charging has been met or not."

Six of the 14 alleged offenders were aged 52 at the time of arrest.

Surrey Police did not hold the data for how many of those charged had received sentences for the alleged offences.

For more information about the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements in Surrey and Sussex go to surreyandsussexmappa.com.