Thousands of Victorian and Edwardian schools, hospitals, libraries, town halls, courts, police stations and churches that are no longer suitable for their original use are in danger of being demolished.

"This is one of the biggest historic buildings crises since the reformation and an enormous challenge both in terms of our philosophy of conservation (what will be acceptable change) and in terms of finding new uses," said Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, at the end of June.

He was making a statement about the organisation\'s proposals for the next five years, during which he announced: "We will be creating for the first time a comprehensive \'At Risk\' register to include all buildings, monuments and landscapes at all grades that are at risk.

"And we will be revising our grant schemes together with our partners the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Regional Development Agencies and others to be better placed to deal with the problems that this reveals. "Our priority will be to try and prevent these structures becoming at risk rather than waiting to clear up the mess later."

He said the priority for English Heritage over the next five years will be to "help improve the way people understand, value, care for, and enjoy their heritage".

"At heart, we want to improve the quality of life of everyone. This is not wishy-washy politically correct stuff, this is about guaranteeing the future of the past; it is about making the past part of our future. This is why we exist."

He said priority would be given to transforming the image of heritage conservation, still too often perceived as people against change and against progress.

"While not lessening current levels of protection, we need a new code of constructive conservation based on respect, understanding and consent. This will be more powerful than one that is perceived as arbitrary and opaque. Nature conservation has done this brilliantly. It is our turn to do the same."

He said English Heritage would continue to work closely with government on the legal framework of the \'Heritage Protection Review\' and it would advise on a raft of reforms in the planning system, the unification of consent regimes and a new Government Planning Policy Statement for the historic environment.

Underpinning these, English Heritage will be publishing a new suite of conservation principles to attempt to guarantee more consistent and explicable decision-making in historic environment cases.

"In turn these measures will be underpinned by an extension of our Historic Environment Local Management (HELM) training scheme for local authorities, by our drive to sign up Historic Environment Champions in every council in England, and by our close co-operation with the rest of the heritage sector.""