I'm not deeply concerned about this, so when the CAA's billet-doux about it (aka IN 2016/082) landed in my Inbox a short while ago, I was just passing time by scanning it quickly.
Here it is, for those whose Inboxes are not occupied by CAA stuff, and enjoy a good read.
What caught my eye was the paragraph below, a strong contender in the "You Couldn't Make It Up" stakes.
At present the IMC Rating/IR(R) is administered differently from all other licence ratings in that the CAA has not required that it be notified by examiners or licence holders when the rating is renewed or revalidated. Consequently, whilst the CAA has records of how many IMC Rating or IR(R) ratings have been issued in each year, the CAA has no record of how many remain current/valid.
So the UK's Civil Aviation Regulator is unable to tell anyone, let's say a Coroner, for example, whether or not an AMC Rating is currently valid, without a time-consuming and possibly unfruitful investigation, or of course having the licence in their possession. Ah, no, that won't work........