> seven years to get an account closed and the money in it returned

Maybe OP can shed some light on why they wanted it closed. My bet is, it was frozen, and transfers blocked for some reason. Happened to my Revolut (LT) account, too, but I could transfer my money out at least.

Both the email address and phone number I had with the account had gone.

It was impossible to recover the account.

It was also impossible to close the account - until I issued the GDPR request.