Thanks SC, good advice. It's at least 6 months away for me, but I'll post here nearer the time, and try to contact anyone who's done similar.
As for approved/not approved, according to Clive Hughes (although, as we've established, some of the info in his book is now out of date), if you convert an ICAO IR, your license must state that your IR is converted from a non-JAR one, and other JAA states do not have to recognise your IR. He goes on to suggest that this won't be a problem for most British pilots, since our lack of knowledge of foreign languages means we're unlikely to want to fly for anyone registered in another country anyway. But he says it may be a problem for European pilots converting an ICAO onto their, say, French licenses, if they then want to work in the UK but the CAA decide not to recognise their converted IRs.
Cheers,
FFF
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