I had built up a stack of unanswered requests over a couple of months precisely because of this issue of the process stalling and not having the time to sit and wait - I'd inevitably do something else whilst waiting and then not go back to the access request list.

I caught up with them all on Friday evening, because suddenly it was all processing fairly quickly, and I was thinking of coming on here to say thanks for solving the issue. So I assume it is an intermittent problem or perhaps rather an intermittent non-problem!

Seems to be working ok for me today. I must admit that I tend to ignore irrelevant requests, where the request is for an area that isn't covered or the metadata makes clear that the data would only be shared in particular circumstances.

Just curious - when you both say ignore, do you mean close (so they don't get an email)? Otherwise you'll end up with lots of requests that are still sitting in your Pending Access Requests list, which I'd find confusing and might also mean that you get called up as being against the T&Cs for supporter membership of the NBNT ("3.1.3. Applications made for better access to the dataset administrator must be responded to within two months of sending the request.")