We have seen this description plenty of times on here in regards to compensation. Don't be put off.
The nonsense 'resolution' replies at the end of a VM complaint are also well-documented on here.
VM has two regular go-to excuses to try to dodge paying. The first is to try to blame 'council permits' for the delay. VM can, legitimately, reduce (but not totally cancel) compensation if part of the delay was due to waiting for a third party. VM's usual routine is to try to blame the whole of a very long delay on the council. Savvy customers, such as yourself, are able to disprove any such claims by contacting their council directly.
VM's second go-to excuse is to claim your installation date was only ever 'provisional' (which is likely what the reference to "the account was not liable for the auto compensation scheme" refers to).
The idea of a 'provisional' installation date is a nonsense that VM has invented to avoid paying out. Usually the ombudsman dismisses VM's claims but sometimes the ombudsman has considered VM's provisional claim. In that case, much was made of what the customer was told along the way while waiting for the installation to happen.
If you have your gibberish 'resolution' from VM, your next step is to reject the 'resolution' and demand a deadlock letter from VM (something they are also not good at providing). With the deadlock letter you can complain to the ombudsman as per process below
https://www.commsombudsman.org/our-process
once eight weeks has elapsed, since you complained, you can go to the ombudsman in any case (without the letter).
You need to set out your failed installation history in a timeline format (dates and times of each event in the non-installation) along with evidence linked to each events (such as texts, email, screenshots, appointment bookings etc. etc.) The adjudicator won't know anything about your case and needs an easy-read explanation to follow the sequence of events to match against the compo criteria. Past topics on here have highlighted that VM's evidence is likely to be an incoherent heap of dates and times (without any evidence to back it up).
An important date is the 'date initially confirmed in writing' when VM said it would 'activate' your service (the VM communication usually mentions something about an engineer coming to install equipment).
Sometimes VM's messages refer to needing to do outside work first of all and this is where VM will claim the install date was only ever 'provisional'.
In a past ombudsman topic, which made its way back on here, the adjudicator dismissed the provisional date claim because VM kept issuing installation dates and sending out tech's (who could not install as no cable was in place).
Take some encouragement from this topic (which AFAIK is still the record wait/compo topic) where persistence from the customer shot down all of VM's fake claims and excuses and resulted in a suitable payout
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/QuickStart-set-up-and/18-Months-later-no-connection-27-cancelle...
Good luck!
