The edit items screen should sort the same as the bib detail page - by home branch instead of by holding branch.
Is this as simple as changing line 722 from this: my ($holdingbrtagf,$holdingbrtagsubf) = &GetMarcFromKohaField("items.holdingbranch",$frameworkcode); to this: my ($holdingbrtagf,$holdingbrtagsubf) = &GetMarcFromKohaField("items.homebranch",$frameworkcode); ? Or does that have a ramification I'm not seeing?
Probably has the ramification that someone will want it to be a syspref so they can switch which way it sorts.
I think this bug has been made obsolete by the addition of the DataTables plugin to the edit items screen. The table may not have a specific default sort, but it can be sorted.