Just wanted to add to this for what it's worth...I applied back in October 2012 and got the standard 8-9 month response re processing time. SV is my case officer. Did my medical and police checks around the end of Jan, beginning of Feb.
My wife's Australian and we're actually heading back to Oz at beginning of June as expecting 2nd child and that will be last chance for her to fly but it does mean that my visa probably won't be ready then. So I contacted my CO just to let her know that I was travelling in June on a tourist visa due to pregnancy etc and did she think there was any chance my actual visa would be ready. All other contact I'd had with her had just consisted of her copying and pasting text from their website but this time I actually got personal response advising me to contact her again at the end of May to see where they were with the visa - I'm taking this as a positive!
However the concern was that she then asked me for my Police checks as she said that she hadn't received them. I went back to her to advise that she must have done as I'd had the orginal returned to me - turns out they had received them but nothing had been done with them and it wasn't on system. Who knows how long would have passed if I hadn't been in touch before they contacted me to ask for the checks again? So, always worth getting in touch every so often with your CO and asking if they need anything extra.
Fingers crossed for 8 month processing rather than 9 months!
