As a trainee on the £17k gross salary (that came in 2-3 months back) you get the following each month after tax: £1,263 per calendar month salary plus £60 per week living allowance.
As I have three kids and owe £345,000 to a bank, I work a second job in the evenings as we need about £3.5k/month to live (mortgage, food, bills, fuel, etc.). This puts me at a considerable disadvantage to the others on the course as you can imagine! They'll do 3-4hrs a night homework and I'll manage an hour or so after I've worked the other job and bathed the kids. Weekends I have to pretty much shun the kids in favour of revising for exams.
As the recent financial results and employee bonuses show, NATS is absolutely swimming with cash. If they really want to pull new people in they should be offering low interest loans to trainees as anyone bar singleton in a bedsit is going to struggle to live on what is offered.
If you or I could borrow enough to get through training to not have to work a second job, we could get through training!
Still, more affordable than the pilot route!