<p>The government has released its long awaited Housing White Paper which it says includes plans “to fix the broken housing market”.</p> <p>The paper includes proposals to speed up housebuilding, promote modern methods of construction, help smaller builders to get into the market, use land more efficiently and amend planning rules so councils can plan for more build to rent housing.</p> <p>Communities secretary Sajid Javid said: “The housing market in this country is broken and the solution means building many more houses in the places that people want to live. The only way to halt the decline in affordability and help more people onto the housing ladder is to build more homes. Let’s get Britain building.”</p> <p>The White Paper proposes a new way of calculating housing demand which will be the basis of every local authority needing to produce a realistic plan to meet its housing need which must be reviewed every five years. Councils and developers will be expected to build homes to higher densities where there is a land shortage and where there is good public transport, such as at train stations.</p> <p>To speed up building, the government will shorten timescales to require developers to start building within two …