Issues with cancellations aren't just confined to Ashington, it seems to be across the board within the North East, or certainly Darlington seems to be a chaotic mess from my observations
Yesterday I was in Bishop Auckland and 1450 was unable to provide my journey home on the 5, sods law the next 5 was E200MMC 2710 which was rather cosy, ended up getting the train home instead (2710 was taken off town services, replacing 7540 earlier in the day)
I ended up having a look on bustimes at the allocations for yesterday plus today and found multiple instances of buses being removed from services, either seemingly due to failures or has had to be pulled from town services or the 7 to cover other services where a bus had previously failed
Most of my experiences of Darlington services recently has been nothing but breakdowns, late running or buses being regulated at peak times leaving the following bus not being able to pick up all the passengers waiting due to capacity, just pleased I don't need to regularly rely on them, just these occasional instances have been grim enough
RE: Arriva State of The Fleet