AN OPTICIAN has admitted secretly recording females at his Bolton town centre practice.

At Bolton Crown Court 55-year-old Martin Clough, pleaded guilty to six counts of voyeurism.

He is said to have secretly filmed women in the toilet at the Newport Street opticians in order to obtain sexual gratification and, on one occasion, covertly filmed up a woman’s skirt as she was undergoing an eye examination.

All the offences took place between December, 2013 and November, 2014.

Clough, of Horrocks Fold Avenue, Sharples, was granted bail by Judge Timothy Stead to allow time for a pre-sentence report to be prepared.

He will be sentenced on September 22.

Last month a fitness to practise committee of opticians’ governing body, the General Optical Committee, made an interim order banning Clough from working as an optician for 18 months.

Clough and his brothers Christopher and Stewart all trained in optometry and took over Clough’s Opticians, the business founded in 1951 by their father, Norman Clough when he retired in the mid 1990s.

Mr Clough Snr died in a Lytham St Annes nursing home last year, aged 89.