The author of that report ought to come to Kent (next door to London). No shortage of housebuilding here!
I live on a small island (9 by 5 miles) and in the past 15 years the western half has been trashed by the building of thousands of unwanted houses. Unwanted by the locals, that is, who watch their roads clog up, see their doctor waiting times increase and have to bus their kids to the mainland each day. The locals can't afford the houses, either, they're mostly snapped up by outsiders. (A classic is to sell a small house in London for £750K, then spend most of it on a much larger house 35 miles away, with say £200K pocket change).
This scenario is playing out across the southeast of England - wooden boxes shoved up with no garden space, all overlooked (seriously, who wants to go into their back garden and have a dozen houses all looking in), all in little dead-end estates. Awful.
What's needed instead of these cancer-like blobs is new towns and cities. Build from scratch, with the infrastructure in place from the word go: roads, hospitals, schools etc - as opposed to the current cancer-like growth system we have here.
As for major infrastructure projects, we are indeed a laughing stock and that won't change any time soon.