Not blogged for a fair old while.  The reason?  As many of you will know, I’m off - leaving Shelter in a couple of weeks to set up a new Ombudsman scheme dealing with legal services.

And I’m rubbish at leaving.  I hate the fuss, the thank-you-and-goodbyes, the keep-in-touches and let’s-be-friends-forevers.  So I wasn’t sure how and when to post my last blog.

But today’s Budget seems as good a place to leave it as any.  Not that the announcement of an extra £1 billion for housing is any kind of ending.  Don’t get me wrong: a housing crisis which has resulted from two decades of under-investment in housebuilding is not going to be turned around by a one-off injection of a few hundred million.

But it is more what today’s announcement symbolises that matters.  Seven years ago, when I pitched up here at Shelter, housing was nowhere on the political agenda.  No-one knew who the Housing Minister was or what the problems were.  No-one cared.  The priorities were clear: health, education, crime, tax cuts.  It was two long years before I heard either Blair or Brown use the word “housing”.

All that has changed.  Do the sums.  The Government today gave away about £8 billion.  Over 10% went to housing – more than health, education or any of the rest except jobs.  Only the environment threatened housing’s second place, and even then over £100 million of the environment spend was for retrofitting homes.

But, as I say, this is scarcely the end.  Nor, to borrow a phrase, is it the beginning of the end.  But it may be the end of the beginning.  Last night, I was a speaker at a Compass event in Parliament.  To some degree, it was the usual posturing (not least from me), but what was heartening was the willingness of those present to engage in the beginnings of a real debate about how to refashion housing to make it fit for purpose and to stop the sort of housing-led economic and social disaster which we are currently enduring recurring in the future.

And it is the beginnings of that debate which are so important.  Make no mistake: the old housing model is broken.  The consequences of that breakdown lie all around us.  Our job – your job – is to work out what the new model is and then get it implemented.  Only then will Shelter’s job really be done.