Good afternoon to all of you :). Hi i got his reply too: Dear Sir, My name is XXX and i work under HSMP visa valid from September 2007 to september 2009. I will need an extension to Tier 1 - General Migrant to get 3 years FLR before 5 weeks of my expiry date i.e. before Sep 2009. I have gone ...

I can confirm that we will not treat applications to for extensions as applications for a first period of leave under Tier 1 (General). But he didnt mentioned if he regarded HSMP extension application as a T1 extension or a new application ... Forgive my paranoid although I am already convinced :)

I agree with ashik_a_s, I guess the reason they mentioned T1 all the time but not HSMP is because they treated T1 as an HSMP replacement rather than different category. I think we've got enough evidence that HSMP is not gonna be affected (emails, calls...), but we still cannot convince ourselves ...