This is a badly thought out of legislation, with no basis in reality.
It is in much the same vein as the ruling that light a/c with engines over 12 years can no longer be operated for PT use.
Unnecessary and totally without basis.
There is no justification for this change, no matter if you can have it done early.
Why, if a pilot is happy to fly it, or an engineer happy to sign it off do we need any more paperwork?
Good legislation should be about common sense, this just creates extra headaches for no good reason.
Doing a check early can be a pain for a myriad of operational reasons and no thought has been given to the end users. i.e us lot.
It is not as simple as just doing a check early, sometimes you need a machine until the last day, add this to the fact that most people have been caught unawares by this and have only realised it when they are presented with a bill of £80 for s*d all, then they are bound to get annoyed.
Another rubbish piece of thinking from our regulators, who quite frankly seem to have about as much nous as your average gold fish and communicate their bright ideas with about as much clarity.