The Ashington vehicle situation is getting worse and worse, with management clearly being unwilling to do anything about it.

Today alone, the following were taken out of service/broke down (some of which failed multiple times!):

1404, 1539, 1541 (x2), 1575, 7529, 7530 (x2), 7544, 7546, 7552, 7570.

In addition to this, there were multiple vehicles which were in service yesterday that were not fit for service today - either for the full day or for morning runout. They ended up loaning 7505 from Blyth, and still had a full 2 missing from morning until evening, multiple X21/22 trips cancelled, and an X15 and X16. This is with a Saturday PVR too, where the X21/22 are at a reduced frequency and you don't have a school bus - Monday will be an absolute war zone with cancellations.

The examples of 1541 and 7530 above also show that they're back to their old tricks of sending stuff out when it clearly isn't fit for service. Today was 7530s first day in service for over a week, when it failed twice on an X22, and it has been swapped twice again today. 1574 is back to failing constantly too, with the exact same issue it had earlier in the summer.

The company have put a significant amount of extra services into that depot over the past few years without giving them any suitable buses to run them with. The X16, 777, and X30s are all intense services and the newest buses given to the depot to supplement PVR were new in 2011.

They're about to add a further vehicle into the Morpeth cycle, which will increase the strain further on the MMCs. As these services will fully interwork, it'll be a full double decker allocation too - where are these extra buses coming from? No doubt it'll be yet more life expired Pulsars from Merseyside/Stockton/Redcar (delete as appropriate) to downgrade the X21/22 even further.

Aware the lack of investment is clear across the region, however given Ashington operate the most demanding group of services in terms of mileage it is negligent to allow their fleet to be in the condition it is.

Given the investment into other regions, are the management of the NE too inept to even put together a case to UK Bus for investment up here?