A year of the coronavirus pandemic has brought us together, even as we’ve had to be physically apart. People, communities, and organisations in our sector have supported each other through the greatest crisis to strike this country in generations.

At the same time, the last year has demonstrated how deep divisions and inequalities across Britain determined how the same disease had starkly different consequences depending on who and where you were. Not only were people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds more likely to suffer severe or fatal COVID, they were consistently more likely to experience negative financial impacts.