The new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak sets out his first budget on Wednesday (11 March).
I would suggest that there are three tests for this budget which will also give us a clear idea about what sort of government Boris Johnson intends to lead.
My three priorities are the climate crisis, the shortage of homes with social rents and the rough sleeping crisis. It would be encouraging to hear clear contingency plans to protect charities from the fallout from coronavirus.
Given the climate crisis, I would love to see support for smaller housing associations like Brighton Housing Trust to enable us to retrofit our homes to meet the highest possible environmental standards.
We have a commitment to review all our homes but affordability is a major challenge given that we have been required by government to reduce the rents we charge for four years.
This has had a serious impact on our housing finances and increases the challenge of paying for improved environmental standards that were not required when we built these homes in the 1980s and 90s.
The large housing builders are falling well short of what is needed to begin to tackle the housing crisis so we need investment in new homes, particularly for community-based housing organisations, so that we can develop small, under-used sites that are already in public ownership, using a not-for-profit model.
The so-called “affordable” housing programme is not affordable. We need homes with the rents the people in a high-cost but low-wage area like Brighton and Hove can truly afford.
I welcome the commitment from Boris Johnson, backed up by a manifesto promise, to end rough sleeping by 2025.
This will require long-term funding into services such as advice, to prevent homelessness in the first place.
We need support services that will help people retain the homes that they have. Most of all, however, we need more homes for people who are homeless and for people likely to become homeless because of the high cost of rents.
The Boris Johnson government is less ideologically driven than, say, the governments with George Osborne and Philip Hammond.
It is more ambitious and we have seen that it is willing to spend substantial sums of money to bring about major changes in society.
The picture on coronavirus is still emerging and charities will step up to meet increased need but this needs to be recognised by national government.
In the event of a worsening of the crisis, many charities will provide a lifeline to those self-isolating or quarantined because of the pandemic.
At Brighton Housing Trust we are particularly concerned about what will happen to people who are rough sleeping or who are living in shared and supported housing.
Many already have compromised immune systems. The Coronavirus could be particularly devastating for these groups.
We are contingency planning but should we have an outbreak in one of our shared houses or hostels, we might need to decant some people and not fill vacancies.
The welfare of our residents, clients and staff is of paramount importance. This might override the financial wellbeing of the organisation.
So I am calling on the Chancellor to make an emergency fund available to support those organisations who are putting public health first and foremost.
Andy Winter is the chief executive of Brighton Housing Trust.
