HD,
I guess we all have our own opinions.. but, WF, have you noticed how many of our colleagues immediately de-select 7000 as soon as they sit down? I do the opposite, having seen more "wildies" than I've had hot dinners!
It may be common practice to de-select the 7000 squawks at the Heathrow end of the room, but they don't do it on any of the other approach units in TC. Pop down the other end and have a look sometime
Heathrow probably only gets away with filtering out the 7000's because they have Thames and SVFR keeping an eye on what's happening at the lower levels around the Zone most of the time. If these units weren't there filtering 7000's would not be such a good idea.
sennadog,
If this is the case and given that there is a lot of GA traffic around the eastern end of Gatwick CTA I can see this veering towards a dramatic increase of GA aircraft asking for a service of some sort from Gatwick as it's long been a concern for pilots such as myself that there is no service offered around that area.
Just bear in mind that Gatwick is not a LARS unit and any service offered will be subject to workload. And if it's busy, a reasonable standard of r/t would be appreciated. Sadly, the PPL community (of which I'm one) often do themselves no favours. But then that's probably a topic for another thread.....
WF.