Sowing pepper seeds now for overwintering???

I don't think that would work very well as the advantage of overwintering them is that you have a full sized plant ready to spurt into growth when the day length increases. If you overwinter a small plant, then it still has to put on loads of growth before it starts fruiting. I'd also worry that a young plant would be more prone to rotting over the winter and be less resilient to being left to dry out. Maybe there's a happy medium where they get to a half decent size, but not full size. Always worth an experiment

Thanks-I'll try some sowings now as an experiment.

Sunshine-what do you define as end of last season? Last year the ones I pruned in the autumn (haven't made a note of exactly when!) didn't make it through but the ones I left un-pruned were OK and I'm now harvesting red peppers on them both (Lipstick and Slovakia).