JP
on tower/approach possibly... particularly at places like bournemouth or cardiff which are a little more like mil airfields with a mix of traffic and not all non stop commercial jets. Heathrow/Gatwick different but the skills are a bit more transferable.
Area is completely different.
Fast track courses have been tried before and in the main did not work. Some of it was down to attitude... old and bold military controllers who thought they knew best and couldn't shut up and learn
Old and bold instructors who sometimes resented mil controllers joining.
Speaking as a someone on your watch who is ex mil and did tower/app and area in the mil before joining NATS. The area course was hard (for me) and I was supposedly a very good mil controller. I had to unlearn a lot of discrepancies to work the way the college needed me to.
Of course TC controlling is more akin to mil than pure area, so that helped on OJT which was, fortunately, much easier for me.