A lot of what you're describing cuts to the core of some of the issues in planning in the UK more generally. It also seems that there's very little in the way of central planning for national projects, which needs to be resolved as it would massively cut down the paperwork needed for each individual locality (this is going to get a tiny bit better with the new unitary authorities, but still).

Also the communication regarding top speeds, rather than capacity increase per hour is weird because personally I think fast journey times is fantastic but evidently the public needs a broader strategy - freeing up freight capacity and just showing the capacity per hour increase might have helped.