Changes to Our Public Roadmap and How We Communicate Access Feature Priorities

Just to add to what others have said Michael_Aldridge  you mention that "New feature development priorities will be listed in regular blog posts"

That's all well and good, but there's not much evidence of "regular" blog posts. In the 13 months from Feb last year to March of 2022, there was one single post.

Add to that the fact that if you look at "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-new-in-access-for-microsoft-365-76454345-f85d-47af-ace1-98a456cb3496", the latest post tells us that "There is nothing new in Version 2009 (Build 13231.20200)" which is, of course 2 years old now. So not even a post for 2 years in "What's new", let alone anything actually new.

It doesn't give the impression that Access development is a hive of activity, but rather that the surprises you mention - as in "we are dependent on teams for capabilities that get delayed due to surprises" - are a little like those phone lines that have been experiencing "an unusually high volume of calls" consistently for several years now...