Check out the NATS website
www.nats.co.uk
and follow the careers tab - there is an ongoing shortage or controllers here, so apply away, they have removed age restrictions recently, due to EU law.
Basically they pay for your training at the ATCO training college just outside Bournemouth. The course lasts 12 months for Tower (aerodrome and approach radar) or 18 months for en-route Radar. You have no choice in which one you are given, but the first 6 months are the same.
They give a very basic subsistance allowance whilst you are studying.
Once you pass the college training you get allocated to an aerodrome where NATS provide services or to one of the centres - Scottish Centre at Prestwick, Shanwick Oceanic - also at Prestwick (near Glasgow), London TMA (Terminal Manoevering Area) at West Drayton (near Heathrow) which is a special approach control covering all London airports or London centre, which as of 3 years ago is in Swanwick, Hampshire. That's kinda between Southampton and Portsmouth.
You then pass through the trainee ATCO grade to certified ATCO grade and so on.
As far as I am aware the NATS course at the training college is respected around the world, and many controllers from other countries are trained here as well as NATS's own.
Be aware as they are paying for your studies they make you sit some very difficult entry tests (which I tried once and failed)... there is a learning styles questionaire, a data checking test (easy unless you are dyslexic), and the toughie one they call a spacial reasoning test which is basically folding up a flattened cube (or cuboid) net in your mind with patterns on and deciding which of several choices it would make......nightmare.....they claimed it had something to do with reading a 2D radar display and converting it to 3D but it just seemed silly to me - I never had a problem on the various ATC radar games available. And finally there's a test on some basic ATC reading materials (probably to check if you can learn a whole pile of info.)
Only if you pass the tests do they let you goto interview. If you do get that far, make sure your mental arithmetic is good, they apparently ask questions like plane out of fuel descending at so many feet per min, at such and such speed, the nearest airport is this far, will it make it?
