0551666K
I think TCZULU's reply above is a fair and justified explanation.
At TC when someone is nearing the end of their training we try to expose them to very heavy levels of traffic. Not for sport, but as a very salient lesson in working whilst outside the comfort zone.
The reason we do this is because sometimes the sh*t really hits the fan and you have to dig deep.... it would be silly to let someone validate that has not been exposed to this as a quick split etc is not always available.... I am sure you do it at Swanwick as well (?), it is a valuable lesson.
It's nothing to do with manning levels (which you guys have down to a fine art with closing sectors etc - not a dig, an observation as you have to do it more than us) flow etc should be in place for those instances as well.... it's for the few times a year when something happens to change the dynamics in the OPS room that catches everyone unawares... leading to 10 or 15 minutes of frenetic (but safe) work before it can be resolved.
In these situations, it is sometimes safer to keep it bandboxed than trying to hand over a frequency. The chances are we are 'man and boy-ing' the sector at that stage because that is quicker and ultimately safer than splitting.
Captain Peacock, as an aside, a sector can sound a lot busier than it is if pilots do not listen out before transmitting, thus causing them to transmit over someone. Every day we have lots of instances (even when quiet) when pilots butt in after an ATCO has issued an instruction, before the target A/C has been allowed to reply or pilots do not listen out for 5 seconds before transmitting on handover. This causes things to sound much busier than they may actually be.
The way TC sectors work, because of the relatively small dimensions of them, our R/T workload is higher than normal if we are relatively busy because of the interaction between all the airports etc - we have to issue more instructions per A/C to enable us to miss all the crossing traffic - (the level of potential conflictions is naturally higher in a TMA (when track miles are factored in to make it a ratio) than in airways). This again makes things sound busier than they may actually be, but can't always be solved by splitting the frequency.