Glamdring -
I'm not sure about the legalities - you may well be correct... I had been informed by a well placed rep that any ATCO redundancies would be through VR (if any).
I assumed that if this was the case then what I stated must be a possible way of making it above board.
Of course, we could ask for ATCO area VRs and recruit trainees for Tower/APP... then realise (in huge inverted commas obviously), that we got the numbers wrong and we now need to change the stream from TWR to Area!!!
Or, if we are really being pedants - if we were to get a qualified ATCO to VR, is a trainee ATCO really considered the same?
After all, the trainee would not be a direct replacement for the post which has been closed via VR, but is in fact recruitment in anticipation of a new post/requirement in 2 or 3 years time... If we only need 100 ATCOs now, but need 120 in 2 years time, are those extra 20 new posts, or posts which have lain dormant for 2 years?
My head hurts...