A judge at Leeds Crown Court has jailed a coach driver and his business partner, after a runaway coach crashed into a car and killed the married couple inside.

BBC News reports that the driver of a coach from Staffordshire firm 1-4-You Airports and Coach Travel was driving 45 parents and their children to a marching band competition on 21 September 2008, when the coach suffered brake failure.

The driver – 53-year-old Robert Oughton from Burntwood, Staffordshire – had taken the wrong route and ended up driving along a B-road with a notoriously steep gradient towards Saxton Hill, near Scarborough.

The coach hit a car in which Paul Clements, 40, and his wife Deborah, 39, from Rawmarsh in South Yorkshire were travelling. Mr and Mrs Clements died instantly.

The court heard that a passenger on the coach had urged the driver Oughton to turn back rather than try and negotiate the steep hill. The brakes failed as the 20-year-old coach began to travel down Saxton Hill and Mr Oughton warned passengers to adopt the brace position as he pumped the brake.

The coach careered through a red light at the bottom of the hill on the A64 and hit Mr and Mrs Clement’s Volkswagen Passat car.

The court was told that the coach had not been kept in ‘a roadworthy condition’, the braking system had not been checked – and the company had not put it in for its six-weekly check on two occasions in the months preceding the crash.

Oughton and his business partner John Lote, 61, also from Burntwood, Staffordshire, had both pleaded guilty to manslaughter due to gross negligence at a previous hearing. Oughton had also pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving.

On Friday (13/11/09), Oughton was sentenced to 30 months in prison for manslaughter and was given a sentence of five years and three months for causing death by dangerous driving, to run concurrently.

Lote received a three-year jail sentence.

Mr Clement’s mother, Pat, said after the sentencing that the family was satisfied with the jail terms – but would never get over the death of her son and his wife.

‘We miss them – I don't think we'll ever get over this properly,’ she said. ‘We're happy with the sentence – whatever sentence was given wasn't going to bring them back.'

Mr and Mrs Clements are survived by their 16-year-old son who was not in the car with them at the time of the crash.

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