So after spending many months reading this and any other useful info I could get my eyes on, my partner and I applied for a spouse visa online 1st Feb. We done the biometrics on valentines day and today got an email stating "our visa has been issued".

No text message went to my partners phone, which I thought was strange as we paid for the premium service that included text and email but I never got any email, just texts. But today I wake up to an email and my spouse has no text.

We just have to wait for the documents to come back and then its all good to go.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone on here for the advise.