Mr Bacon's question appears to be based on a misunderstanding of incident reporting processes. Form 1261 is a Civil Aviation Authority form provided for the purpose of reporting incidents. NATS has no authority to change the form and alterations could only be initiated by the CAA. There have been no recent changes to the form. These forms are submitted to the CAA and are not signed by anyone other than the person who raised them. There is no section on the form for the watch manager or supervisor "to agree or not agree with the comment logged by the controller".
It seems likely that the question is directed at the Swanwick "ATC Safety Observation" process-a separate safety monitoring process whereby the watch manager or supervisor would in the past endorse a controller's view as to whether an Observation was safety related or not. At the suggestion of the local safety and quality management team at Swanwick, this system has recently been modified to give the endorsement role to the watch operational safety representatives. These watch safety representatives are responsible for promoting a strong safety culture at their units and supporting the safety observation process. They participated in updating the process.
Watch operational safety representatives are operational staff nominated by their colleagues on the watch, and are not in a line management role. The change has generally been very well received and the process is working effectively. If there are occasions when the watch safety representative is not available, the Observation form will be endorsed by the local supervisor or watch manager as before.