Diamond West Midlands

Diamond Bus Ltd., trading as Diamond West Midlands, is a bus operator in the West Midlands. It is a subsidiary of Rotala.

In 1984, Geoff Howle commenced a coach operation trading as the Birmingham Coach Company. Following deregulation of the bus industry in 1986, Howle applied to operate route 16 between Hamstead and Birmingham in competition with West Midlands Travel.^{[better source needed]} Other services subsequently operated included service 120 (now service 12) between Dudley and Birmingham and service 50 between Birmingham and Druids Heath. Service 16 and 50 are still operated by successor Diamond Bus. Buses used were predominately Leyland Nationals.

In 2000, the Birmingham Coach Company changed its name to Diamond Bus to replace many of their existing Leyland Nationals, expanding their network in Birmingham and the Black Country. By 2003, Diamond Bus had become a National Express contractor and opened a depot in Bradford.

In December 2005, the Go-Ahead Group purchased Diamond Bus, followed with the purchase of the 100-vehicle Probus Management in February 2006. Go-Ahead merged the two companies to form Go West Midlands.

In March 2008, Go West Midlands was sold to Rotala, who also owned Central Connect and North Birmingham Busways. Rotala originally kept the Diamond business separate from Central Connect and Ludlows (purchased later), instead switching a number of routes between the three operators. From November 2011, Central Connect was re-branded as Blue Diamond.

In July 2008, new buses were put into service in Redditch on routes 57 and 58, branded as Red Diamond. Since then, a number of routes in North Worcestershire were re-branded as Red Diamond, alongside the launch of new routes in competition with First Midland Red in Redditch. At the same time, new buses were allocated to a number of Black Country routes, branded as Black Diamond. First Midland Red subsequently sold both its Redditch and Kidderminster depots to Diamond Bus.

The Diamond Staffordshire brand was introduced in late 2012 for the company's services around the Lichfield area.

Following the purchase of Central Buses, Diamond took on operations in Lichfield such as 35 to Walsall. This service was subsequently taken over by Arriva Midlands and operated from their Wednesfield depot, acquired with the purchase of Liyell Limited (t/a Midland), until operations from there were sold to Diamond Bus, which brought Diamond back on to the 35 route.