My advice was directed at people like you. It’s a gamble, as Peter said, but in your position, I would gamble on doing an IMCR or IR(R) now at an RTF/DTO and hope that it’s a straight grandfather later.
You are not explaining the difference between the IMCR and the IR(R) very clearly.
They are functionally identical, but one appears on your national licence and allow to fly IMC/IFR on what is now confusingly called an Annex 1 aircraft, but we all knew until recently as Annex II, and the IR(R) is on your EASA licence and grants the same privileges for EASA aircraft.
It is a terrible fudge, and always was, but it’s our fudge and it works and it’s much easier, in my opinion, to think of them as different, with different privileges, different histories and different futures.
Bloody hell I never realised that!
Not many people have the UK CAA national license, I suppose. Well, maybe a few k have but they weren’t expecting to ever use it again.
The CAA is reluctant to issue National licences, but if you say you want it to fly Annex 2 (hadn’t realised this is now Annex 1) they will issue them.
You don’t need to say anything. The CAA is required to issue a UK licence without the applicant justifying the need.
And of course our UK CPLs and ATPLs have embedded IMCR privileges still……….
The really funny thing is the way UK PPL/FIs in the 1970s and 1980s were given BCPLs which then became CPLs which then gave them IMCR privileges (shown on a subsequent to-EASA license transfer as IR(R)) and they could train for the IMCR without ever having had any instrument qualification 
Those instructors are probably mostly retired now, but – as with any FI who doesn’t have a full valid IR and an IRI – the training they do towards the IMCR or IR(R) won’t count towards the CBIR.
Peter wrote:
Those instructors are probably mostly retired now, but – as with any FI who doesn’t have a full valid IR and an IRI – the training they do towards the IMCR or IR(R) won’t count towards the CBIR.
15 hours of it will.
Also Peter those who were given BCPL on the back of being a PPL/FI. Where given BCPL(Restricted) and when EASA kicked in they reverted to PPL/FI.’s
Those that had BCPL’s that had passed the CPL TK, passed the CPL GST but for what ever reason never automatically upgraded to a CPL at 700 hours where told be the CAA that to get a CPL that had to pass a CPL skills test and they would then be issued with an UK CPL which they can convert to an EASA CPL. I know of at least two people who did this at fair expense.
Then at the last minute the CAA said anyone with a BCPL(unrestricted) would automatically be issued an EASA CPL. As you can imagine two people were about miffed about this.
Does anyone have an update on the currently applied IMCR → CBIR credit?
Post above suggests that if the FI is the “normal IMCR FI” i.e. no IR and no IR authorisation, the max credit is 15hrs, but with the “right FI” it is full 30hrs
This is valuable because almost nobody does the IMCR in 15hrs, especially part-time.
Peter, if your FI was full IR FI, then you could claim more than 15 hours… Normal route is you get your 15hrs on IMCR, after the test you get P1 XC in IMC (15hrs+), following by CB-IR at ATO.
