Just to highlight how well Arriva NE management are doing at the moment (given the weird, constant, defence of them):

There are multiple vehicles failing to meet E6 emissions standards again, and have all been pushed to Ashington. They can therefore only be used on the 1, 2, or 57 - with deckers being sent to Blyth to work there (7529 and 7551 at present). This is leading to crush loaded Streetlites and Pulsars appearing on infrequent rural services.

Additionally, there are still near constant breakdowns (particularly with the 64/15-plate batches of E400s). They're back to sending things out constantly to break each day - 7554 a prime example. I'm told that the 'new' engineering manager that recently started at Ashington has already left.

Presentation is slipping again too, after a brief period of things being 'looked at'. I see a few Blyth buses every day on my way to work and I can't remember the last bus I saw that was even remotely well presented. There was a 'MAX X10' branded DB300 I saw the other day, when all MAX branding should have been removed a year ago, if not more. A decent number of E400s have pretty visible fuel spills down the offside, which has caused vinyls to come off - examples: https://flic.kr/p/2sa6Rmx, https://flic.kr/p/2s58XUn.