*disclaimer - I am not part of, nor do I speak for EpicUK*
I think EpicUK came into being in part due to this kind of situation, it's hard when you have groups that don't interact 'on the table' as it were, trying to convince others of list problems, and really puts a lot of inertia on the development process when everybody gets a say, if you look at the OGBM thread as an example, mordoten has been doing stellar work but is being pulled this way and that by lots of people with very divergent opinions, I know, I'm one of them
as an example there, pretty much every game I've played with OGBM has been a loss, so from my POV they seem very weak, but lots of others (including other UK based guys like Tiny-Tim and E&C) have had very different experiences, I'll freely admit I'm not the best player around, and out of the guys I play regularly with, am easily the least competetive, but I have definitely tried to take feedback from others and implement their ideas and I still see the list as underwhelming
The second part, which is tied to the first, is that NetEA can be very very slow.... if you look at the number of lists being approved, it can really drag at times, despite the efforts of guys like PFE200. EpicUK closes off the development and as a result can get lists put out much faster because they have fewer people to please, sometimes they're similar to the NetEA variant, other times they're wildly divergent (take tyranids for example)
I think really it comes down to tournament organisers, I think EpicAU is a great idea and will hopefully go a long way to making the AU scene more fulfilling for all of the players, and will undoubtedly churn out some great lists that people all over want to play (like lots of people outside the UK prefer the EUK nid list) it's highly unlikely that we're ever going to agree on everything (or even most things) which is fine, but is probably going to lead to frustration and circular debate
Sometimes I think people need to be more pragmatic and just accept the direction the AC sets for a list, even if they don't fully agree with it, in my mind it's better to get the lists approved, THEN work on rebalancing and really the best evidence for this is to play lots of games, batreps with activation by activation pics are obviously the best but again, I'm guilty of not doing this, our next best option would be to use Kyrt's battle tracker (which I'm going to use to store my batreps in from now on) to build up a searchable, consistent database from around the world
Finally, lots of us in the UK *do* contribute data to the NetEA project, I'm AC for two NetEA lists and have been playtesting the OGBM list as well, but more data on the established lists like Biel-Tan is going to come from EpicUK tournament data because that's where those lists are used most
I'd prefer it if we could all be on the same page, but I don't think that's going to happen, I mean if the ERC ruled it, would guys downunder stop playing TLOS for the purposes of batreps, or would the UK guys stop playing area terrain? would that be productive and standardising, or more likely, would it just alienate entire groups of playtesters who disagree?