I would still love to see Sapphire 7 be increased to half hourly operation on Sunday daytimes.
From what I've seen the Sunday service on the 8 seems to carry fairly low passengers numbers outside of the Darlington section of the route and the timekeeping at times is pretty poor, saw it running 20 minutes late this afternoon! Think it would be better to scrap the 8 on a Sunday and possibly either extended the 56 to run Durham - Bishop Auckland like the daytime service or have two separate 56's with one running as it does now (Durham - Stobb Cross) and also have a 56 run between Bishop Auckland and Ferryhill possibly interworking with service 5A at Bishop Auckland. Service 7 could possibly be diverted on Sundays to serve Ferryhill Station on Sunday daytimes in place of the 8.
Problem with these suggestions is they would likely to result in more resources being required, possibly only one bus but still it's an extra bus out.
Arriva North East: Service Suggestions