Congrats on the good news! As you say, the CAA have been good and to be honest every dealing Ive had with them has always been positive.
I sympathise with the exam paper situation though. I sat (and passed) JAA PPL Air Law & Op's and HPL on Tuesday....left 2 questions to come back to in air law and then ended up putting the 2 answers in the wrong boxes somehow. God knows how but thankfully picked up on it when I went back through and double checked all my answers. I know the pressure is a tad different to ATPL's but it just goes to show how its easy to make stupid mistakes when you're concentrating on answering the questions correctly.
Anyway, bad news for the fella who got 43% but I'd be happy with 88% so good on ya!