I wondered if anyone would point this out. England's population has risen 25% in my lifetime. Worse, the (perfectly adequate for this level of population) water infrastructure in in the wrong place... It's all in the North East in order to supply steel mills that are no longer there!

There's a similar phenomenon in the US when someone talks about "needing to have had built housing", as if this tidal wave of people was just some necessary fact of reality.

This is something that was intentionally done and the argument was had and, agree or not, people didn't want it to happen. It happened anyways. Of course, the policy can be reversed.