It does seem to be a ridiculous amount of time to have to wait , if its going to be as simple as a few metres of duct etc, but if that is the only reason for the delay , then it is unacceptable.
I seriously doubt the delay is due to ‘shortage of engineers’ .
Some regions Openreach have their own Civils teams , so providing duct etc remains in house , other regions will use contractors, or even a mixture if the two, presumably this supposed shortage of engineers referees to Civils engineers and not Openreach installers .
TBH , if you swapped to another FTTP provider it’s unlikely to speed anything up, after all whatever ISP you changed to would still need OR to do the work ( or arrange the work with a contractor ), compo will ultimately depend on if the gave you a contractual date , OR could possibly avoid some compo to the ISP if the ISP didn’t alert the customer to the potential delay , but consumer compensation comes for the ISP not from OR , but it’s usual for the ISP to not quote the compensation until the service is eventually provided as it’s based on the number of days from the initial appointment date until service is provided or in the case of a fault restored.
If you haven’t tried to contact the BT FTTP customer service reps ( the number already posted ) I would try them , or try contacting BT via social media
