Your instinct about the tension is right, and it is worth setting out properly because it confuses a lot of people. Maintained status and restoration are different things, and they do not overlap. Maintained status means you applied for a new permit before your current one expired, so you keep the conditions of the old permit while the new application is processed. Restoration applies when status has actually been lost, with a 90-day window from the date it ended. You applied on 29 July for a permit expiring 31 July, so on the face of it you are on maintained status rather than out of status. That means restoration would not be the right route, because there is nothing to restore. But there is a complication in your specific sequence, and it is the reason your question is a good one. Once the visitor record is issued, you become a visitor rather than a student. A PGWP application requires you to have held valid student status, and the restoration-to-student route exists for people who need to be a student again at the point of applying. So the question is not really maintained versus restoration. It is what status you actually hold when the PGWP application goes in. The other thing that matters more than either, and nobody has raised it. PGWP applications have a deadline running from your programme completion letter, not from your permit expiry. So the real question is how much of that window is left, because it decides whether any of this is still available to you. When did you receive your completion letter? That date governs everything else here.
