Its a good foundation for the IR. If it saves you an hours worth of very expensive IR tuition it might well be worth it.
Try an engineer your IMC course to include:
1) A recency checkride allowing you to hire club aircraft again after a period of non-flying
2) As many hours as possible towards the night rating requirement.
3) A checkout in a new aircraft type.
If you were going to be flying those hours anway just to build time for the CAA then really the cost of the IMC is only the expese of having the instructor sat with you (paltry) and the CAA fees for issuing the IMC certificate. Minus of course the saving on night hours for that rating and minus the hours that you would have spent on a recency checkride and a type conversion/checkride.
It can be V cheap depending on how you look at it.
Good luck,
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