Since my last post, I spoke to an Applications Engineer from ST. He revealed that ST do have a more enhanced technical support than is publically available on their website, but this requires customers to apply for a support account with ST, which we've now done through him.
This is welcome news - though without wishing to sound ungrateful, I still with we didn't have to jump through hoops just to get the kind of technical support that other companies provide as standard. Steve.