A drunk driver whose car struck a child outside a primary school while almost five times the legal alcohol limit has been jailed for 14 months.

Gary Ralph had his five-year-old twin daughters in his Lexus RX 400 car when he crashed at speed outside Hempstead School in Hempstead Road, Gillingham, on April 27 last year.

The 43-year-old accountant hit the bottle and drove after his wife was unfaithful to him and she asked for a divorce, Maidstone Crown Court heard.

The boy who was injured was being picked up by his grandmother in the afternoon and was pushing her three-year-old granddaughter in a buggy at the time.

Edmund Fowler, prosecuting, said Ralph reversed at speed, hitting the boy, and then struck a telegraph pole before shooting across the road into a tree and wall.

When the car doors were opened, one of the twins was found crying in the front passenger footwell and the other was in a rear footwell.

The girls had not been strapped into fitted car seats.

Ralph, formerly of Rotary Gardens, Gillingham, now of Lullingstone Avenue, Swanley, climbed out of the car and could not stand up.

The boy was left with a fractured toe and had to have his foot in plaster.

Judge Andrew Patience QC told Ralph, who was banned from driving for three years: "On this day you were in no state to go within a mile of a motor vehicle for the purpose of driving."

He added it was merciful that the children were not seriously injured but said they must have been terrified.

Ralph had admitted dangerous driving and driving with excess alcohol.