Airservices introduced separation assurance to cater for the lowest common denominator. They were passing trainees that should never have passed and as a result the number of separation incidents had gone up.
When it came to Approach control, it was the biggest crock of ****, due to the relatively small amount of airspace you are dealing with. The end result was delays, unnecessary vectoring and unhappy pilots. We had approach controllers that had no idea of aircraft performance (climb/descent) and the result was they were vectoring aircraft for 20+ extra track miles.
Safe and expeditious used to be our mantra - expeditious went out the window with the introduction of sep assurance.