No, they still need a designator to describe the difference between "half trained" and "fully trained" technicians and, in the tech world at least, the CT kind of sits in a very unique place in a SQN, very roughly described below -
SAC - Had "some" trade training at Cosford, just enough to be semi-useful when they arrive on a SQN and start On Job Training to prepare them for returning to Cosford later - trained by experienced SAC(T)'s and CPL's.
SAC(T) - After finishing their full trade training at Cosford they are now fully trained technicians who carry out the vast majority of everyday jobs.
CPL - Directly supervises the work carried out by SAC(T)'s, carries out the more complex engineering tasks which new SAC(T)'s are unable to yet and is the highest level of "hands on everyday work" technician.
SGT - Mainly an office manager now who is in charge of issuing the jobs/assigning priority to a single trade on a single shift and deals with trade admin (leave, authorisations etc) and is a usually only called on for tech work on highly unique tasks.
C/T - Rectification controller, collates all the jobs required for the SQN that shift and issues all the jobs of the day to the SGT's of every trade and keeping them co-ordinated, is responsible for just the technical work done by every trade on a single shift.
FS - Shift manager, in charge of all the admin done/needed by every trade on a single shift but little to no tech work.
In that rough example the CT role is extremely important where the experience required is higher than a SGT's but it would hurt the admin side of running a SQN if the FS had to do it.
After the SDR of 2000 reduced the RAF's numbers there were still too many CT's left which means that SQN's had to "find" more jobs for all the CT's they had so that "How a SQN works" blurb above became disjointed with CT's having completely random jobs created like "paper work co-ordinator" created or worse they took existing SGT tasks like keeping Auth's upto date etc which really screwed SGT promotions (too many CT's already with no jobs for them so little promotion and now you do less anyway) which then negatively impacted the number of CPL to SGT promotions etc, it was a right cluster-poop when I left at the end of '14. Hopefully by now that CT blockage would have ben cured by retirements, natural wastage etc but for about 15 years it caused all manner of issues.
(And you don't get that any more!)
