The damage that we do to ourselves and to the environment by continuing on the path of throw-away, everything is disposable, whether cheap, one-wear fashion or needlessly demolishing existing buildings, is at last coming into focus. 

The NLA Conservation and Heritage award is therefore bang on the money in terms of being timely and relevant to the important change of direction away from thoughtless waste towards the sensible and sensitive preservation of our built environment. Our daily lives are framed by the buildings that we see as we pass on our way to and from our destination. 

The apparently clean sheet of paper provided by a cleared site often encourages designers and developers to reach for the demolition contractor rather than the thinking cap. 

Developers and landowners should be encouraged to reverse that approach by thinking long and hard, first about reuse and conservation and last about destruction. 

The opportunity to build bigger if the site is cleared does provide a temptation to close the eye and the mind to conservation. Unfortunately, site values, inflated by the potential to build bigger, are often the enemy of sensible reuse.  However, the development equation may look different when the damage to society and the environment are factored in.  

The case for intelligent conservation and repurposing of existing structures should be considered alongside every planning application that involves the demolition or major alteration to an existing structure. The case should be promoted and debated by a team independent from the applicant. 

The skills required to recognise the potential, imagine the outcome, and manage the process of conservation need to be encouraged with equal importance to those of cleared site construction. 

Our towns and cities must be allowed to provide for the changing needs of society, but the value of the connection to our heritage, as given by conservation of those parts of our inherited structures that we all experience, should be respected. 

Grand examples include Liverpool and St Pancras Stations where world-class conservation has been merged with hugely successful commercial reuse. On an individually smaller scale, the saving of over 400 houses in the Welsh Streets in Liverpool is another great example.

These houses (including one where Ringo Starr was brought up) were to be demolished with government-supplied grants and replaced with characterless blocks; instead, they have been conserved and transformed into high-quality and highly desirable homes.