A judge has recommended removing a Sexual Offence Prevention Order he imposed on predatory paedophile Simon Burrows.

The restriction on the 48-year-old’s liberty can only be removed if the Chief Constable of Wiltshire agrees within the next 35 days.

Burrows, who lived in Hilperton when he committed his string of offences, received an indeterminate jail term in May 2008, after admitting abusing children and possessing some of the worst child pornography ever seized.

He was given a minimum prison term of four years, reduced on appeal to three-and-a-half, and has been back on the streets since last September, after being released on parole. As he is subject to a life licence Judge Douglas Field has now ruled he does not need to retain the Sexual Offences Prevention Order, which is designed to restrict Burrows’ liberty.

The licence means he cannot have contact with children or use the internet without permission of his supervising officer, so the judge decided the additional extra order was not necessary.

The acting Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police, Patrick Geenty, will now decide whether to approve its removal.

Tessa Hingston, for the Crown, urged the judge, sitting last week at Swindon Crown Court, to retain the order, saying breaching it was a criminal offence.

She said that could mean Burrows would be arrested and detained more quickly should he breach its terms, but the judge disagreed.

Former IT consultant Burrows was jailed for public protection after abusing a number of children.

He admitted 36 charges of sexual offences against children, including touching, taking pictures and videos and voyeurism.

In December 2005 his wife set up a nursery and after school club in Steeple Ashton and he abused his position of trust to ingratiate himself with some of the youngsters.

He molested others when he was giving them lifts in his car, and was eventually charged with molesting 12 children, both boys and girls, aged between two and nine.

The offences came to light when a six-year-old girl told her grandmother that Burrows interfered with her as part of a game and another boy told a similar story.

When police investigated they discovered he had set up a camera to film teenage foreign exchange students staying with them in the bathroom.

On his computer they found 3,626 indecent images and 180 videos of children, many of which were in the most serious categories.

A forensic expert described the images as some of the worst he had seen in his 10 year career.