Communities secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Philip Hammond today revealed plans to boost the housing market, including a £2bn pledge for housebuilding and a £3bn fund to provide loans to small housebuilders.

The £2bn fund will seek to speed up housebuilding by using public land, relax planning rules and encourage alternative forms of development like custom-build and off-site construction.

New planning rules will make it easier to build on brownfield sites by giving automatic permission in principle for suitable sites, while enabling developers to swap old office buildings with new residential construction.

Despite increasing housebuilding since launching its ambitions to get all Brits on the housing ladder, David Cameron’s government failed to meet its annual building target of 275,000 in 2015.

In his speech at the Conservative Party Conference today in Birmingham, Hammond said the government will use all the tools at its disposal to tackle Britain’s shortage of housing.