I am starting to lose patience now and I'm normally a very laid back person. 7 months and no news, BOWP applications with no movement on those either. Opening up the sites to collect biometrics would be wonderful but the backlog will be immense and I have been waiting since March. The longer we wait the more it will hurt when they open. You just know with how all this has been handled their approach will be "They are open now so go book a slot for in 6 months time, good luck".
All this waiting would be ok and make sense if we were still heavily locked down. But there doesn't seem to be a problem going to a restaurant and movie theater