One does have to wonder about the usefulness of the PTA 2000.
After all If I fly from Oxford to Jersey, I need to advise the Special Branch. However if I do a touch and go at Cherbourg enroute, I don't.
Furthermore, The UK's only land border has no security at all and one can come and go as one likes. However if you fly across that same border, you need to inform the Special Branch in advance.
It is a requirement to file a flight plan for all international flights. In this day and age it must be easy for the Special Branch to link into the flight plan system and using a simple filter, review flights departing from non-served airports to foreign destinations. They could use this information to send a local plod arround to get some details and ask some questions if required.
The air defence can chack all movements and flight plans so there is already a system in place.
Money spent on a new computer would easily be offset by allowing that plod to return to the beat insted of waiting by the phone for a possible call from some PPL going foreign.
DFC
PS The IOM Special Branch keep your details after the first visit so on subsequent visits, all they need to know is your name and the fact that you were there before.