It’s currently operationally efficient to use the 62/X6 interworking pattern to operate those short 38A trips. I imagine other avenues to use an unbranded bus may be looked at for the next changes if possible. Is the current situation ideal? Far from it - is it better than no bus at all? Well of course it is.

I think one of the points being raised is that each hour for around 10 hours of the day, 6 days a week, a bus heavily branded as “Peterlee” is operate a short local circular service some 8 miles away. Which is different, in my opinion, to just a few peak time runs. But really the same branding argument could potentially be said for the X6/62 themselves - they spend a total of 4 minutes and 20 minutes in Peterlee out of journey times of 35 minutes and 78 minutes respectively, hardly just “Peterlee” based.