SHBT is a charitable company which acquires buildings at risk, repairs them to the highest possible standards, selling or renting them for suitable long term uses.
It does this through undertaking studies of buildings, either making the information obtained available to others, or itself undertaking building repairs and establishing new uses. Only when projects are economically unattractive to a private or commercial developer, does a building preservation trust to step in. Building preservation trusts are therefore often known as "restorers of last resort".