For residents of small to medium sized towns and villages (where there's plenty of land available), the rapid sprawl and worstening traffic is incredibly visible.
If your definition of "loads" is based entirely on whether you're being personally impacted, divorced from the broader context, then even small amounts of housing construction can seem like a lot. If one house goes up on my block it might be disruptive enough to make me think there's a lot of construction going on.
But by no objective measure is the UK building "loads" of housing.
For residents of small to medium sized towns and villages (where there's plenty of land available), the rapid sprawl and worstening traffic is incredibly visible.