AN APPEAL by a pub arsonist against his conviction for manslaughter is scheduled to go ahead on Monday.

Keith Willoughby, 54, was jailed for 12 years after he was convicted of blowing up Canterbury's Old Locomotive public house and killing cabbie Derek Drury.

His case for an appeal rests on legal argument relating to the directions the judge at Maidstone Crown Court gave to the jury at the trial last December.

Willoughby, who lived at Wincheap, Canterbury, has always protested his innocence. He blames squatters for the blast at the pub in Station Road West in August 2002.

Mr Drury, of Station Road, Whitstable, died after he had gone with Willoughby to the Old Locomotive.

Willoughby was subsequently convicted of manslaughter and arson. He has been serving his sentence at Elmley and Swaleside prisons on the Isle of Sheppey.