Nicnak,
I still refer you to the original posting. I shall excude the FISOs for arguements sake as they are licensed posts with LCEs and OJTIs responsibilities. The question still remains, for example about our colleagues on the Flight Plan section, you complain about the errors that are made in dealing with joining clearances from your unit because of inputting into the Host Computer system I presume. These people have to input flight plans for the whole of the FIR not just your unit and therefore I am sure that they do it out of ignorance of your requirements and therefore a system of annual competency checks are a good idea. The Flight Plan supervisor at Swanwick is an ATSA4 who is the Flight Plan specialist do whom all of us refer to in flight planing matters, including Local Area Supervisors and the Watch Manager and yet apparently has no responsibility for their departments standard of work. The ATSA2s who work on the sectors at Swanwick are the personnel who deal with HCS matters to which most ATCOs have no interest or knowledge. To say that these personnel with their specialist knowledge have no responsibility for it and that it is the ATCOs responsibility is an outmoded concept and does a grave disservice to our ATCO colleagues who have enough to do with thir own duties and would be challenged in the courts if there were to be an accident. I also think that NATS would back a system where these anomalies could be addressed in the interests of air safety irrespective of the costs. Finally, Nicnak excepted, I still think objections that made be raised are a matter of personal ego for quite a number of people.