A Helston policeman has been sent for trial on 25 serious charges including threatening behaviour and a sexual offence.

Christopher Alan Higgs, aged 29, of Flora Gardens, will next appear at Plymouth Crown Court in March, with a trial due to start in May.

PC Higgs, a constable with Devon and Cornwall Police, was arrested at the end of January and charged a few days later. He faces a total of 25 charges, including fraud, theft, threatening behaviour, sexual touching and attempting to pervert the course of justice, over a four-year period between 2009 and 2013.

Fourteen of these charges are allegations of fraud relating to four different women, with amounts ranging from £120 to £13,237, and in two of those cases he is accused of making a false representation to a bank.

It is alleged that he told the women he needed money to pay a car loan repayment, utility bills and council tax, while he informed the bank he had the authority to gamble on an account belonging to one of the women.

In another incident he is alleged to have told a woman he needed £441 to repay bailiffs when in fact he was gambling.

He has also been charged with counts of threatening behaviour and intimidation towards two woman who were complainants and witnesses in assault investigation, in one instance allegedly raising his voice and using his status as a police officer “intending to intimidate” her at Gunwalloe.

Another three charges are for attempting to pervert the course of justice, by telling one woman to lie to police and destroy evidence, and another to take actions which would “bring her alcohol reading below legal driving limits” and thereby allow him to cancel a blood test at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, according to the charge sheet.

A further charge relates to the alleged use of “menaces” in Porthleven to demand that a woman did not pursue him for money which he owed.

PC Higgs is also charged with four counts of theft, of amounts totalling £576, relating to three women.

The sexual assault charge relates to an alleged incident in June 2012 involving a woman aged 16 or over.

He is currently on bail, subject to the condition the he not contact any of the four women named by magistrates.

PC Higgs has indicated that he plans to plead not guilty to all of the charges against him.