Update on this, I'm currently contemplating moving away from our hosting company who I've been with for nearly 15 years! They put their rates up and with USD vs AUD$ exchange range hosting is now costing around $430 per month!
So I'm contemplating moving to Invision Power Hosted Solution - which means I wouldn't need to manually run periodic updates and think will save some money on hosting with it. I'm pretty sure things like the emails not being received would also get fixed in that move. Which I haven't had a chance to dig further into yet.