Epic fail on Saturday morning at the South Terminal. Bored middle aged woman directing traffic upstairs to security with the minor detail that downstairs was clearly not busy. No queue for the boarding card check, staff sitting and waiting and a reasonable sized queue for security visible. Upstairs was a queue of thirty people before the boarding card check and a further long queue for security. Upstairs has a fraction of the lanes that downstairs had open and quiet.
Spoke to "the man in the white shirt" who said that in the summer everything would be on one level and much better. He had no answer as to why there was no apparent logic or queue management in place and I should be alright as I wasn't going to miss my flight. It's not rocket science to have a team lead keeping an eye on which queue is big and which one is small and direct people accordingly. Such a glaringly obvious way to reduce stress and make the airport experince a better one.
Saturday evening LGW North much better but a Saturday evening in January is not where the challenge lies.