image for illustration: Neil Owen, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Celia Clark, of the Portsmouth Society, the Hampshire Buildings Preservation Trust and the Sustainable Conservation Trust, remarked on the relevance of the relatively new ‘Don’t Waste Buildings’ (DWB) initiative at the IHBC’s last council, and agreed to write a short blog on its work as posted below.
Celia Clark & DWB write:
As a dedicated conservationist who’s worked to save and repurpose historic buildings in Portsmouth and Hampshire for more years than I care to remember, the launch in April 2024 of the Don’t Waste Buildings (DWB) campaign, a proactive movement advocating for the reuse and retrofit of existing structures crystallised my long-held belief that buildings can and should have a second – or even more – new lives after their first function disappears. As DWB says, there are buildings all over the UK, and globally, which are untapped economic and social assets, not structures to be casually discarded. They could be utilised to deliver much-needed housing and development at greater speed, lower cost and with less of an impact on our environment.
The Don’t Waste Buildings campaign was co-founded in May 2024 by Will Hurst (Managing Editor of The Architects’ Journal), Leanne Tritton (Founder of ING Media), and Richard Nelson (Managing Director of Abyss Global). It’s non-party political, with no funding, membership fees, sponsorship or commercial interests of any kind, run as a collective by individuals including leading property developers, financiers, architects, engineers, heritage experts and others.
Over 150 volunteers and 2,200 LinkedIn members focus on its six key objectives: Engage, Recommend, Inform, Demonstrate, Collaborate, and Educate, aiming for ‘policy clarity and financial incentives to make the reuse of existing buildings simpler and more profitable in order to stimulate growth in housing and development’. Regional UK Chapters have been launched in the West Midlands (Birmingham), North West (Manchester) and Scotland, and the first international chapter in Australia (Melbourne). DWB arranges study tours of vulnerable and reused buildings in different parts of the country.
Its April 2026 report ‘The Reuse Dividend: Unlocking Economic Growth from Britain’s Existing Buildings’ called on the UK government to overhaul its tax system to incentivise the reuse of empty buildings, warning that Britain is missing out on billions of pounds of potential economic growth. The report analysed financial incentives used across eight developed economies — including France, Germany, the United States and Ireland — and found a proven blueprint that Britain has failed to adopt.
Central to the group’s concerns is what it calls a ‘perverse incentive for demolition over renovation’: retrofit projects currently attract 20% VAT, while new-build housing pays zero.
The report identifies this disparity as the single most impactful barrier to building reuse, and recommends four complementary measures to address it:
- Levelling the VAT playing field
- Tax credits or relief, such as introducing capital gains tax relief and stamp duty discounts for bringing vacant buildings back into use while meeting sustainability quality measures
- Creating targeted grants for struggling high streets and derelict buildings; and
- Subsidised finance: Establishing long-term low-interest loans with repayment grants for deep reuse projects through the National Wealth Fund, or a similar institution
Report lead author and DWB co-founder Richard Nelson said: ‘A single empty building on a main street can define whether that street feels alive or forgotten. The opportunity is extraordinary. The only thing stopping us is the way we tax it.’
The report also cites Historic England research suggesting that converting empty buildings over 100 years old could deliver up to 670,000 new homes.
RIBA Board chair Jack Pringle, who attended the launch, described the VAT disparity as ‘perverse’ and called on the Treasury to act, while a government spokesperson pointed to existing energy-saving VAT reliefs and the £15 billion Warm Homes Plan as current measures in place.
DWB events in London and Portsmouth
In May last year I enjoyed the DWB event at 123 Golden Lane in London which is a model for Building Reuse, a refurbishment of a late Victorian building into a workspace which includes a cluster of architectural practices, preserving 80% of the original structure to minimize embodied carbon.
We heard about the international spread of the interactive Demolition Map (www.demolitionmap.uk). 50,000 buildings are demolished a year in the UK. The Map highlights Buildings Lost, Under Threat and Reused. The Portsmouth area of the UK map is well stocked – with the help of the Sustainable Conservation Trust which is based in the Dockyard Heritage Quarter. Catching sight of the large Tricorn site, empty since its demolition in 2004 makes me furious every time I pass it on my way out of the city. Two architects prepared reuse plans for this multi-use, multi-layered structure, but the minister refused to list the building – and it was demolished. Just as infuriating is the pile of rubble – all that’s left of the local newspaper The News’s office, distribution centre and printworks. The latter was in use until 2023/4. An application to list it as an iconic 60s building failed. First Bus pulled it down using a loophole in Permitted Development – which urgently needs to be closed. In summer 2025 DWB and Historic England held a seminar in Portsmouth’s Sustainable Conservation Trust’s office – the reused iron-framed Navy Pay Office in the Historic Quarter of HM Naval Base, followed by a tour of Portsea and Old Portsmouth exploring change and renewal locally.
See the details below and for general details contact Celia Clark at celiadeane.clark@btopenworld.com and
Contact Don’t Waste Buildings info@dontwastebuildings.com
See https://www.dontwastebuildings.com and https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13002786/
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