I now earn twice as much as I did with Aunty as a TMA controller (= I save twice as much), have more time off and work less.
You do the maths
Presume you are converting your salary to NZD otherwise you would be indicating a salary around 300,000 pounds!
Presuming you had stayed here and you say 27yrs, then you would be on or very close to the top step by now and average between the 140-150k mark depending on the sector AIL, OJTI, etc. Given the current exchange rate at .45 that would indicate you earn around the 130,000 pound mark (to earn twice as much). I'm surprised there hasn't been an influx of English ATCO's at that salary! So to be as better off as you say the tax would have to be alot lower, and you would certainly have to get more value for your pound over there vs our NZD here ie what you can buy for 1 pound there and what you can buy for 1 dollar here etc.
On average I would say actual time on position per shift would be around 6 hours - a lot less in the weekends so you would have to do less than that and better than our 2 on 1 off roster concept. You must have better than 33 annual leave, 11 stat, and 5 shift workers leave ie 49 days off.
So, assuming your not exaggerating at all, then we have 2 locations outside of NZ which have much better salaries and T and C's and better cost of living.
Good for you on making the move but it still doesn't make, IMHO, NZ as one of the lowest ranked places to work 'in the world', as some posters seem to attest to.
There you go - I've done the math, and I wasn't attacking Slackie, merely clarifying my point.