Yaffs, not too far off topic.
Night staffing is dependent on the requirements of the day watches for extra staff, courses to be undertaken on days off following nights/spins and covering known sickness. Not all the sector staff remaining will hold all the necessary validations for bandboxed operations or will have the full validations but only in one discipline, usually Planner.
A single validation will allow one ATCO to act as cover in the event the bandboxed sector is split, a Planner only ATCO can operate as a full member of the night team. Under these circumstances the Night staffing complies with the PSS and the duty staff can remain SCRATCOH compliant ……………until one of the “fully” qualified ATCOs goes sick. At that point the “partially” qualified ATCO may become a spare part and sectors get closed.
The problem is staffing rather than rostering. Resignations and retirements come from the ranks of the “fully” qualified, so this pool of controllers is shrinking. There is a limit of how many night shifts we can do within our contracted hours and a lot of us exceeded that limit last year. Nights are not popular and are arguably the most anti-social of all our shifts so spreading the pain is understandable.
Until we significantly replenish the numbers of “fully” valid ATCOs delays at night will continue.