Stonehenge Tunnel | Judge quashes legal challenge against DCO decision
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Campaigners’ case against the government’s decision to green light the £1.7bn Stonhenge Tunnel has been quashed by a High Court judge.
The £1.7bn A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down upgrade, which includes a 3.3km tunnel beneath the Unesco World Heritage Site as part of the 12.8km dualling project, was granted a development consent order (DCO) by the transport secretary in July 2023.
Campaign group Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) launched a legal challenge against the decision to grant the DCO on numerous grounds. These included claims that the government had not considered the risk to the Stonhenge monument, had not assessed the climate impact of the scheme and had not properly assessed alternative routes that would take the road around the site without the need for tunnelling.
The case was heard across a three-day hearing in December and Justice Holgate has today, 19 February, handed down his ruling which has found that the government followed requisite procedure in its granting of the DCO. The project can now move ahead.
Holgate’s 50-page ruling said SSWHS’ contentions were mostly “unarguable”. He said that ministers had focused on the right policies in making the DCO decision and that the campaigners’ evidence against this provided “no basis for undermining that conclusion”.
National Highways project director for the A303 Stonehenge scheme David Bullock said: “We welcome the High Court’s decision and wait for conclusion of the legal proceedings. It is a positive step forward and would mean that at long last we can progress solving the issues of the A303 near Stonehenge.
“It represents decades of working with our stakeholders, heritage bodies and local communities to create the best possible solution.”
SSWHS director John Adams said: “In the face of government indifference to the harm this road will cause the World Heritage Site, we had no choice but to bring this legal action. While this judgement is a huge blow and exposes the site to National Highways’ state sponsored vandalism, we will continue the fight. In the dying days of this Conservative Government, which has inflicted so much damage on the country, we cannot let it destroy our heritage as well.”
Historian and Stonehenge Alliance president Tom Holland said: “This is a devastating loss, not just for everyone who has campaigned against the government’s pig-headed plans for the Stonehenge landscape, but for Britain, for the world, and for subsequent generations.”
National Highways and the Department for Transport (DfT) were contacted for comment.
The Stonehenge Tunnel project was initially given approval by former transport secretary Grant Shapps in November 2020, against the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendation, but this was overturned by the High Court in July 2021 when it ruled that his decision was “unlawful”.
This did not conclude the project as Shapps sent the DCO application back to the drawing board. The DfT and National Highways then continued to work on the application for a number of years. It was approved again in July 2023.
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