Just to clear up a few points here. Firstly the London Guildhall (now London Metropolitan University) notes. Whilst these were a source of concern in the past a new set of notes produced in conjunction with Lund university in Sweden and Nordic Aviation in Norway are infinately better . They are clear in colour and all info needed for passing ATPL is there. All the progress checks are feedback questions as are the practice exams at the end of the course. As with all things in life the more you put in the more you get out. People who are putting the effort in are passing all first time or dropping only 1 or 2. The overall pass rates are well above the national average.
Secondly Stapleford Flight Centre, there is a fleet of 18 C152s which range from basic for purely VFR & hours building up to an airways equiped model. Also they have 3 C172s , 4 Warriors 2 of which are used for commercial training. and 3 Arrows while only one of these Arrows is used for commercial tests another is having a fairly hefty avionics upgrade to fit HSI, RMI, & later GPS at the end of Oct. & will be approved end of December. Also on the fleet are 2 Senecas for twin/IR training. The Jewel in thier crown however is the FNPT2 simulator which they purchased this year and is proving remarably successful and popular with the students.
Finally the personalities. Head of training is Colin Dobney who joined from Ryanair and still flys for them occasionally. He was also with Sabre Airways before that so has good knowledge of both the Scheduled and Charter airline business operation. He is heavily involved with the IR training and 170A tests for CPL & IR.
Eric Thurston is the Head Synthetic Flight Instructor and as has already been mentioned in this thread he has been training for nearly 50 years. Commercial CFI is Annabel Winter who is ex monarch and BIA, she is also a CAA CPL examiner. PPL CFI is Alan Turner.
My final bit of advise is to check out their excellant pass rates, go & visit them and talk to the students there on courses, I've yet to hear a bad word about the place