I haven't gone down this route yet but an FO I used to fly with had.
If you have a current SPA SEP IR and you do something like 5 IFR approaches a year in a SEP and documented them in the remarks column you can renew your SPA SEP IR by experience as long as you have a valid MPA IR.
He had few issues persuading an examiner that it was legal but in the end he beat them into submission with emails from the caa and legislation. I don't know where he got it from but he was pretty chuffed he didn't have to pay for an IR check flight.
If you let the SPA SEP IR lapse for any reason you have to do a flight test.