>Often it'll be a case of "hey this table is actually searchable now" or "that page is now split into two" or "I removed a tonne of deprecated code"

Ah, how does that gel with regression testing? We've tried something similar but got swamped by the need to test those code changes and the testers got upset being lumped with additional work while the rest of the team got to play with whatever they liked. Did you forgo testing for the sake of morale or did you come up with another solution?