The issue as I see it at Arriva in NE is a lot of the fleet is coming up to renewal age and there doesn’t appear to be any plan in place to sort this out. The Blyth fleet is almost entirely 2009-2012 VDLs on the front line services, so between 8-11 years old. Midlife currently but coming up towards the age when they need to be booted to secondary services. The same is true across all depots though - look at Darlington as a good example. 15 year old Scanias still putting in sterling service on front line express routes, and the town fleet is pretty much made up of a selection of 9-11 year old Solos. The B9s on the X93 for example are about to go into their 6th summer on a very demanding service, it’s about time they were given an easier life.
The issue with all of this is there is nothing coming in to replace anything, so the fleet is being pushed to work longer into their lives where reliability is going to start dropping off. That may be fine on some of the more backwater routes like Durham’s 56/57 or Ashington’s 35, but it won’t be accepted on front line services.