Diamond Buses

• On Wednesday 24th August 2006 Go-ahead group PLC owners of The Birmingham Coach Company announced today a restructuring of their West Midlands business. The Birmingham Coach Company Ltd was renamed Go West Midlands Ltd and from that date the company traded as Diamond in the West Midlands instead of Diamond Bus

• A new livery has been introduced for the combined fleet which is the current Diamond Bus livery but without the black roof. Repainting started with the yellow vehicles from the former People's Express operation that were to remain in the fleet.

• From early September 2006 Go West Midlands now shares the same Managing Director, Philip Kirk, as City of Oxford a fellow Go-ahead company

• A new fleet numbering scheme was introduced from Sunday 24th September 2006. This was in fact a part renumbering as some vehicles had acquired fleet numbers in early September 2006 only to re-numbered latter in the month so vehicle types are allocated blocks of numbers.

• The new Diamond in the West Midlands fleet names were applied to vehicles as they are repainted from early October 2006.

•  From 22nd October 2006 vehicles and services will be moved between garages so that at the time all remaining Centro contracts were operated from the Tivadale garage.

•  It was planned to reopen  the Redditch garage  from late October 2006 (this is the former Midland Red Church Road garage) for the operation of Redditch local services plus the Diamond service 50 between Druids Heath and Birmingham City Centre.

• It open initially on a Mondays to Saturdays between 0600 and 2000 basis only, though it is now a seven day a week garage.

• The re-opening of the Redditch depot was delayed whilst the application to change the operators license was processed. Diamond Bus finally re-opened the Redditch Garage (the former Midland Red Garage) over the weekend of the 10th and 11th February 2007. This followed an extensive refurbishment. 

• The former Pete's Travel/People's Express garage at Hill Top closed as an operational garage over the weekend of the 10th and 11th November 2007. The majority of vehicles will transferred to the Tivadale Garage. From the same weekend all of the remaining step entrance vehicles were withdrawn from service.

The Go-ahead Group undertook a review of the West Midlands bus operations and announced on 3rd March 2008 that it had completed the unconditional sale of 100% of the share capital of the company to Rotala plc ('Rotala'). The gross asset value of the business was approximately £1 million and the net book value was approximately nil. Owning the former companies of The Birmingham Coach Company and People's Express cost the Go -ahead group a total £10.2M to both purchase and restructure the two operations into the Diamond operation. The sale to Rotala only realised £2M hence why Go-ahead had to make provision for the remaining £8.2M in their half yearly accounts published in December 2007

From Monday 21st July 2008 Rotala started to put a number of new buses mainly Volvo B7R single deckers. Some of the new vehicles have been allocated to the Redditch depot branded as Red Diamond. The remainder of the new vehicles are being used in the Black Country branded as Black Diamond. From Sunday 25th January 2009 the Ludlow's and Diamond Bus fleets were merged following the closure of the Ludlow's depot in Halesowen. In September 2009 a new depot was opened at Droitwich to operate Worcestershire contracted bus services in both Droitwich and Worcester areas. With the reduction in fund available for bus subsidy in Worcestershire the Diamond bus operation in Worcestershire was drastically reduced from Sunday 24th April. From that date the only services operated in Worcestershire were 51, 57A, 58A, 61 and 70 plus evening and Sunday journeys on 143, 146 and 247 in Redditch. The Droitwich local services, the 362,363 and 383 to the south of Worcester plus a number of late evening journeys in Worcester. During September and October 2011 Diamond bus adopted a new five figure group vehicle number system. Many vehicles carried both their new five figure number and their old 3 figure number

Note vehicles 31479-85 were registered R3-7/9/10OXF respectively. The vehicles were registered soon after entering service with Diamond. The registration marks have been transferred to vehicles in the then sister company The Oxford Bus Company . Note 30862 was originally numbered 30853 and registered BU08DBY