Holy Moly! 10-13 months!!
Yeah, 2012 was the year of massive backlogs - a mixture of staff shortages at UKVI (for some reason, they got rid of a load of staff in one go) and people frantically applying under the old 2-year settlement visa rules before the new 5-year rules came into force on July 9th 2012.
FLR(M) processing times were hit the hardest and people were waiting around 10 months for a decision, up to 13 months in some cases!
So the Settlement Visa I'm waiting for lasts 2.5 year correct? Then I have to do the FLR visa to stay? How long does that visa last?
All the visas are settlement visas
. They are the family-based visas that lead to settlement in the UK
.
Your first settlement visa will be the spousal visa, valid 2 years and 9 months (33 months).
After 30 months in the UK, you apply for your second settlement visa, which is FLR(M), valid 2.5 years (30 months)
After 60 months in the UK (2.5 years on the spousal visa and 2.5 years on the FLR(M) visa), you can apply for ILR.
And if it takes about 10-13 months to wait for it when do you recommend that we start it all beforehand (provided that my settlement one is approved in April 2017)
You can't apply until 28 days before you reach 30 months in the UK... so for you, if you move in April 2017, the earliest you can apply is around September 2019. If your visa expires before the visa has been issued, your spousal visa immigration status will be extended until the FLR(M) has been processed.
However, it hasn't taken 10-13 months since 2012 and that was a massive anomaly. In January 2012, it was taking about 4 weeks. From February 2012 to about March 2013, it was taking as long as 13 months. After March 2013, it went back down to around 4-8 weeks.
In fact, I don't think it's taken longer than about 4 months since then, with most applications processed within 2 months.
The processing standards times for FLR(M) in 2012 used to be 6 months. Now the processing standards time is 8 weeks.
Most applications are processed within 8 weeks, though some can take a bit longer - I think someone here on the forum waited 14 weeks at the end of last year.