Many many thanks to all members of this forum who put up with all the stupid questions i came up with during the last few months. We got ILR approval at Croydon PEO on 5th feb and received BRP today (7th feb).
At the PEO the whole process was going fast at first but then there was a long long ...... that long wait - took us about 7 hours overall.
My case was fairly straight forward. HSMP + Tier 1 G. All documents in place with photocopies. My wife applied with me as a dependant. I also have a son who was born in UK and holds dependant visa but did not apply ILR with us.
Appointment was around 8:30 reached PEO at 8:00. We were among the first few people to enter. Around 2 minutes for security check and another 5 for initial application check and token number. 2-3 minutes for the fees payment and then waited about 10 minutes for our nubmer for case registration.
The person doing case registration gave us a scare when all of a sudden she asked us why my wife has two valid passports. Then we understood what she meant by it. My wife's passport was going to expire in 2-3 months time we renewed her passport recently, although they put a stamp on the old passport saying that a new passport has been issued the old one was still valid for the next month or two. So we told her the story and she said its fine. Case registration took about 15 minutes. Our number was called for biometric while we were still at the case registration desk. We took all the documents in hurry and went for biometrics.
During biometrics the guy asked us if our finger prints have ever been taken for a UK visa. My wife did not actually remember whether her finger prints were taken or not so she told him that she is not sure and he asked her to write "not sure" on the biometrics form. The guy told us that they were having some issue with the system and that its very very slow, he also had to scan our finger prints and photos a couple of times as the system was having issues. The other people recording biometrics were saying the same thing.
By 8:50 our biomertics was done and we were waiting for the case worker to call us. We waited for about 1 hour and did not get called. Our token was at the very beginning and we could hear other token numbers being called who came way after we did. Finally around 9:50 a case worker called our number. She asked me for all the documents + photocopies we had and then told us that she will call us when she is done. We sat just in front of the counter and started waiting. She called me around 10:30 and said that everything looks fine but the finger print results have not come back yet so we will have to wait.
In addition she said that she has a question, why did we not include our son in the application even though we applied for his dependant visa in 2010. I told her that we applied for visa in 2010 because he had to make a trip outside of UK but now we are not including him in ILR because we want to register him using MN1 after our ILR. The case worker just said that your son's application should have been here. She has got me really really worried since then.
Can someone please advice whether there is going to be any problem by not applying for my son's ILR with us?????
Anyway the long wait started after this. The case worker was professional and quite helpful. She started processing other applications but in the middle went twice to check whether our finger print results have arrived. Around 12:30 she called me and gave me a near heart attack saying that there is some complication and the finger print results have still not arrived. I asked her what the complication was and she said that she does not know as it is on the biometrics side. Anyway we kept waiting and looking at so many people who came long after us and received their approvals. There were another 3 couples who came in as early as we did and were waiting along side us. In the end even these people got their approval and we were still waiting
The case worker finally called us around 1:30 and gave us the good news and said that she has received the results and its all ok. She asked me if its ok if she went on for lunch and approve our application after she is back - i said its fine ( as if i was going to say no and piss off the one person approving my application
) She came back at around 2:30 and by 3:00 we had our approval letters and were on the way back home like a happy bunny 
I am preparing MN1 for my son now. I would very much appreciate if people can tell me if there is any problems with my son not having ILR? He was born in the UK and is less than 3 years old, he holds a Tier 1 dependant visa which will expire in the next few weeks - Please tell me if this is all OK???????
Once again many thanks to all of you.
You can use any council, it does not have to be your local council.