I think the UK system works very well as evidenced by the lack of mid air collisions and the lack of a statistically significant higher incidence of TCAS warnings in UK airspace.
Obviously the whole thing rather relies on airmanship. I have spent many hours over the least year of two in IMC without radar or procesural ATC control. This is never something which is done lightly. However, in the UK if you earn by the hour as a FI then the typical weather almost impells you to fly uncontrolled IMC in many parts of the country.
By having a sensible pre-planned entry and exit from IMC conditions, by observing quadrantal rules and making blind transmissions over beacons one can operate with a reasonable degree of safety.
In the South East of England this probably would not be the case. However much of the UK is pretty sparse (mid Wales in my case). The military can more or less be gauranteed to be mowing the lawn at the weekends these days. "Proper" IFR traffic will have ATC seperation from you as well as possibly TCAS.
I have actually done it one several occassions with only a funtioning VOR receiver and transponder. Thats not much to go on and a lot of OBS twiddling is required. However, if you set yourself some rules and plan plan plan before the sortie then it can be doen safely.
With regard to the wider issue of the IMC. This is a really great example of the UK common sense approach. Is it better to be scud running in poor viz or is it better to be up there way above MSA in the clear blue? I know personally of two people killed by running just below a cloudbase into cummulo granitas...
You donīt need the demands of the full blown UK IRT to fly perfectly safely down an ILS or VOR/DME approach to, say, 650ft QFE. I see new students every week able to fly perfectly safe ILSīs down to 400ft QFE with only half an hours instruction.
Long live the IMC rating.
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