A 1980s Whitehall office block, a cinema that once boasted the widest screen in the UK and the former headquarters of Birds Eye have been named in a top 10 list of 20th century buildings most at risk.

The Twentieth Century Society, a campaigning charity, published a list on Tuesday of the buildings it is most concerned about. Its director, Catherine Croft, said that even buildings with listed status protection were threatened, and that listing had become “just a minor inconvenience for determined developers”.

“We must not allow quick profit or spurious ‘public benefit’ arguments to outweigh the loss of buildings which future generations should be allowed to cherish and enjoy,” she said. “Once demolished, these buildings, and the stories they tell, are lost for ever.”

Half of the buildings are in the London area, including Richmond House, a building that once housed the headquarters of the department for health and social security.

Richmond House. Photograph: SAVE

Designed by architects William Whitfield and Andrew Lockwood, the office block only opened in 1987. The plan now is to demolish most of the building to make way for a temporary House of Commons chamber and offices while the Palace of Westminster undergoes a refurbishment costing at least £3.5bn.

The society highlighted the turrets that flank its entrance and the elaborate cathedral-like staircase with a working portcullis. It added: “The offices are beautifully lit and the extensive leadwork of the complex roofs is rigorously detailed.”

Richmond House is Grade II listed, a category of architecturally important buildings that make up only 5.8% of listed buildings in the country.

Others in the top 10 with that listing are Ardudwy theatre, a striking brutalist building in Harlech, north-west Wales; and the former All Saints Pastoral Centre and Chapel in London Colney, Hertfordshire, which was designed by Sir Ninian Comper, considered one of the great church architects, and completed by Comper’s son Sebastian in the 1960s.

They join the grade II-listed former Birds Eye headquarters in Walton, Surrey, which was designed in the 1960s and is one of the first corporate HQs to be built outside London in the American manner. The building has been empty for 11 years and is due to be demolished to make way for 375 homes and commercial units.

Other London buildings include the BFI Imax cinema in the centre of a roundabout near Waterloo. It had the widest cinema screen in the UK when it opened in 1999 and, with an underground line just 4.5m below the surface, was considered a sensational feat of engineering. It is now one of eight sites in the area identified as suitable for tall buildings in the Lambeth local plan.

Also in London are the Nicholas Grimshaw-designed Homebase superstore in Brentford, now closed and earmarked for housing; the British Library centre for conservation, which opened in 2007 and is now threatened by Crossrail; and the Alton housing estate in Roehampton, on the edge of Richmond Park, which faces redevelopment.

Allbrook House & Roehampton Library. Photograph: Diamond Geezer/Flickr

The society has been actively involved in fighting individual cases, mostly unsuccessfully. That is the case in Sunderland, where plans to demolish the civic centre, considered too big and expensive to maintain, have put the 1960s building on the list.

The top 10 is completed by the former Fawley power station in Hampshire, famous for its 650ft chimney.

The society publishes its list every two years as a campaigning tool. Croft said more imagination was sometimes required. “Many of these buildings could easily be adapted for new uses. For instance, the Homebase store would make an excellent supermarket, and the Birds Eye headquarters could be converted for residential use.”