I thought this might be of interest to some - I have recently found out that the Manukau branch of INZ operate a 'priority allocation' system for some SMC applications that meet certain criteria. I discovered this after I lodged an SMC application for a client of mine in early September and another SMC application for a different client at the end of September, and the application lodged in late September got allocated to an Immigration Officer before the earlier one did!
The current criteria for 'priority allocation' is:
• Salary is above the high remuneration threshold
• Occupation is one that requires registration through a governing body and applicant holds current registration
• Employer is a government department
• Application is under the Residence from Work stream
If an SMC application lodged at Manukau meets one of the above criteria, it will be allocated within 1 month of lodgement. All other SMC applications are currently taking at least 3 months to allocate to an Immigration Officer at the moment - more staff have recently been employed so it's anticipated that the wait time will decrease early next year (but it does take a few months for a new Immigration Officer to get faster at processing and therefore have an effect on the length of the queue).