Flowers left at the scene of the fatal accident in which Eric Haylett died

by Keith Hunt

A top civil servant who drove the wrong way down a dual carriageway and caused the death of a grandfather has been spared a jail sentence.

Kevin Franklin was sentenced to six months imprisonment suspended for a year after a jury cleared him of causing death by dangerous driving.

The 52-year-old senior director with the UK Border Agency had admitted causing death by careless driving.

Franklin, of Manor Way, Bexleyheath, was also ordered to carry out 200 hours unpaid work. He was banned from driving for 18 months.

Eric Haylett, 75, from the Longfield area, was killed near Bluewater shopping centre just two days after his wife's death.

Franklin had been to the cinema at Bluewater with his family on New Year’s Day last year when he went alone to collect his Cherokee Jeep from a car park and took the fatal wrong turn onto the B255 St Clements Way.

Mr Haylett was on his way home from visiting one of his three daughters as the Jeep smashed into his City Rover. He died at the scene.

Judge Jeremy Carey told Franklin: "It is a feature of these kinds of cases in which a death has occurred as a result of a dreadful collision that two worlds collide at the time of sentence."

Driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway, he said, was "carelessness of a very considerable kind".

He added: "It is for that reason I conclude it was, indeed, carelessness which fell not far short of dangerous driving.

"The matter which tips the case away from immediate short custody is this: That this defendant will never recover from what has been for him a deeply traumatising experience, just as the family of the victim will never recover – and that is the tragedy of this case."

One of Mr Haylett’s daughters said in a victim statement: "I am still very angry that someone can drive in such a way that their actions take someone’s life. How can it have happened?"

Another daughter said: "Driving the wrong way down a dual carriageway towards another driver is not an act of carelessness, it is extremely dangerous."

Judge Carey said it was "an entirely understandable statement".