I imagine those figures to be correct, I'm sure I read somewhere that for an integrated course CAE reccommend £5,000 for living expenses, and accommodation will be about £8,000 for the duration, so that plus what you'd need for your type rating would end-up about £45k extra, which you'd need to have lying around to do the job properly.
For my last job (non-flying) it took me nearly four months from application to my first day, and I really didn't expect such a job to take that long, so I suppose given the nature of flying, 7-8 months isn't that bad. I think from application to start date, it's probably about the same timescale for the armed forces. In my experience, jobs always take longer than you think to materialise.