I think that you should contact the safety people at TC. Ask them about their experience of flights joining controlled airspace who were kept below and who subsequently had an RA. Ask them what their policy is now about getting such flights into controlled airspace ASAP and why they will not put such flights at risk by someone in the real world saying
Don't know who you have been talking to at TC - but it is not policy, new or not. It has always been
best practice to get traffic INCAS ASAP, but what do you want us to do? Make phone calls to EGLL etc cancelling free-flow on their SLOTted flights so that we can give immediate clearance to an aircraft from an airfield lying OUTCAS?
If you work as an ATCO at Southampton (or other NATS unit) then you will have been told by your company not to delay joining IFR flights.
Again, not true. Don't know who you have been talking to, but they are feeding you some real porkers.
As you are well aware, DFC, Class A airspace is a known traffic environment. We delay entry into it for A/C OUTCAS because entry at a particular time would mean a confliction with the known traffic. We all know that there is unknown traffic OUTCAS that may also be causing a confliction, but as it is unknown i.e. intentions unknown, there is nothing we can do about it. We, at TC, seeing as you have used TC as an example work in a known traffic environment... end of story. We separate known traffic, we don't have time, or the equipment, to separate from unknown traffic OUTCAS.
Any aircraft speaking to an Area TC Controller will be given BS at the best... it
is policy to give nothing more.
The very fact that a lot of time it takes 5-10 minutes for the aircraft in question to get airborne after we have been given notification means cancelling free-flow would not work.
If a pilot wishes to take off from an airport OUTCAS cannot guarantee remaining VMC whilst remaining clear, then it is his or her lookout (sic). Not ideal but until the likes of Fairoaks and more importantly, Farnborough are afforded Classified Airspace protection, that is the way it is going to be. How much fun will that be if Farnborough get to double their passeneger numbers as they are hoping to do??
You want it to run smoothly? Then make the whole of the LTMA from surface to upper level boundary Class A. Most ATCOs who don't fly privately would welcome that. Most ATCOs who fly privately would acknowledge it would make our job easier and ultimately the whole process safer if we did that.
The GA community might have something to say about it though...