A brain surgeon whose hired light aircraft crashed into a family home in Shoreham has been cleared of endangering the public.

The prosecution offered no further evidence on the fourth day of Donald Campbell's trial after a former chief pilot of Concorde said the plane was "an accident waiting to happen".

Judge Anthony Thorpe directed not guilty verdicts on two charges of endangering the safety of an aircraft and endangering people and property.

Campbell, 54, was cleared after William Lowe said fuel records for the Piper Seneca had been inadequate before Mr Campbell had hired the aircraft for a return trip to Sheffield from Shoreham airport.

The court heard the Piper Seneca ran out of fuel as it came in to land at Shoreham and crashed into the roof of a £200,000 house near the airfield.

Campbell, from Battle, escaped with cuts and bruises. The occupants of the house were out when the crash happened.

The prosecution had claimed the plane ran out of fuel because Campbell blundered when he converted US gallons into litres - and put 23 too few litres into the plane for the journey.

Defence witness Mr Lowe said there had been a number of inaccuracies in the fuel recordings and there was often a five-gallon discrepancy in the log because although the full tank capacity was 128 gallons, only 123 was useable.

He said: "The five gallons mistake has been made very frequently. I think this makes the point that the supervision of this document's entries was at the very least inadequate.

"We are frequently and consistently seeing an error of at least five gallons."

Asked what his view was regarding the fuel records of the aircraft, he said: "I think it was an accident waiting to happen."

He said he believed if the five-gallon discrepancy had not previously been made, Campbell would not have crashed.

Regarding Campbell's alleged error in converting US gallons to litres, Mr Lowe said: "You can't just pick out that error when there is a whole series of errors.

"Mr Campbell just happened to be there at the point of receiving the consequences of it."

The court heard the plane belonged to Sky Leisure Aviation and had regularly been hired out.