Whowhenwhy,
UK has not filed a difference on FIS and until 12 March the UK provides FIS as defined in ICAO Doc 4444. After that date we will provide services in accordance with CAP774 and in my opinion the level of service will be worse than before. A point well made by pumuckl.
The reason this has happened is apparently because the CAA wanted to make delivery more consistent and improve education of both pilots and controllers. Well, controllers are being re-educated but it remains to be seen how well that process will go with pilots, given that it took 20 years for a majority to have a vague idea of what the services are, and I don’t expect this will improve the education of foreign pilots one little bit. As far as delivery is concerned, I suspect northsouth is spot on:
Unfortunately I suspect the new rules will be interpreted differently by different units and by different controllers in the same unit, so we will be no further on than we are now. But I think the current system works pretty well because controllers are pragmatic people who will always try to provide the best service possible within the constraints of rules and workload. And that's what will keep the new system sensible too.
In the event, although I think the guidance in CAP774 is to be welcomed, that, and re-education is as far as we needed to go, and the new procedures are a retrograde step. I am prepared to bet that they utterly fail to address the perceived problems they were designed to fix.
Still, the good news is that they won’t last too long because when EASA take over in a couple of years they intend to harmonise services across Europe!