The great thing about the IMCR is as CM says - it gives you options. It gives you the IFR option, which in the UK is priceless. If you planned flights say 3 days ahead at random, you'd have to cancel perhaps 50% of them if you had to fly VFR (maybe less in the summer, nearer to 95% in the winter).
With an IFR option, this might fall to somewhere between 5% and 20% depending on whether you fly to airfields with an ILS for example.
The limiting factors that remain are
Currency (costs time and money)
Availability of a decent aircraft (costs money)
Icing conditions in IMC and below the MSA
and.....
Picky has picked on the #1 problem with instrument flight in the UK: the majority of airfields don't have official instrument approaches.
If the destination has
1) a confirmed cloudbase 1000ft AGL (say there is an ATC airfield 10 miles away, the weather is uniform, and you get their ATIS) and
2) there is no terrain for miles around and
3) one can do a position fix using at least TWO completely independent methods (of which a moving map GPS should be one) and
4) one can get a reliable QNH, say from a nearby ATC airfield
then I would be happy to descend, on QNH, to say 700ft AGL, and that would be my decision height.
600ft is the lowest I've been and I would never do that again - not because it was dangerous but because it was pointless; my alternate airport with ILS was 10 miles away and I had the plates, the ILS set up, and everything ready.
I've seen people go a lot lower. Over open flat countryside, or over the sea, they will get away with it.
A number of airfields have unofficial instrument approaches, using a navaid on the airfield or perhaps a few miles away. That's superficially a better way but is no different to the above rules.
1500ft cloudbase is a LOT better
Especially as a 1000ft base reported when you set off could actually be 800ft, and 600ft 10 mins later...
The safest way is to go down a nearby ILS and continue visually, and if you can't continue visually then climb to the MSA and go somewhere else.