Checks currying seems to be the sole cause of much misery to many people here. I feel your pain and I'm so sorry this still is the case.
The adjectives used for the noun checks are 'external' or 'necessary' in a way that blame/responsibility for any application falling outside the HO's service rate is undoubtedly being apportioned elsewhere; other Government Departments or countries, that's neither here nor there; it's not them, HO, that is inefficient or incompetent for any delay endured by any applicant.
It is your country of origin that is the cause of the delay, seems to be the impression not without reason in some cases. Very cute of the Home Office.
In my particular case, a political refugee or if you like, a former asylum seeker, it is in the interest of my country of origin to cause me maximum displeasure -- incredulous though I am, I kept imagining the manner in which Home Office officials might have approached this foreign dictatorship asking them with all diplomatic courtesy about the criminal records of, in my case, a dissident/defector. This is comedy of a high order, if you're of a sportive mind, because opposing my former government made me a traitor and fleeing the country rendered me a wanted/escapee. Would my former Government then have had anything nice to say about my character were they asked by the HO? I doubt it very much and doubt they - like my two British character referees - were ever approached. And since my application's been approved and I'm naturalised, I'm left with a fair conclusion, that 'external' checks in my case, which lasted five months and 15 days to process and approve, and in the sense of waiting for replies from my country of origin, were very likely to be smoke and mirrors.
Generally, the current Home Secretary is suspected of sitting on as many as five unfavourable independent reports.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... on-reports
But more to the point, in today's report (
http://icinspector.independent.gov.uk/w ... rt-web.pdf) it is the HO's failure to sufficiently curry out 'INTERNAL' checks that's been hogging the headlines, at least in the case of the former asylum seeker who'd self-declared killing someone. That is, the cases they have in files within their own department i.e. Screening Interview etc - weren't always thoroughly checked, regardless of time checking took elsewhere externally.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... ome-office
Just to quote the report's author John Vine OBE "Apart from automated police and immigration checks, virtually no other checks were conducted to establish the good character of applicants who had applied to become naturalised as British citizens.
Furthermore, I was concerned that the eligibility requirements in respect of referees were disregarded
and played no part in the decision-making process."
Some external checks indeed!