Stonhehenge Tunnel | Final legal battle starts as expenditure to date tops £160M

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National Highways’ controversial scheme to dual a 12.8km section of the A303 between Amesbury and Berwick Down in Wiltshire, including a 3.3km long tunnel across the world-famous heritage site, was granted a development consent order (DCO) by the government last summer.

The campaign Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) against the DCO decision was dismissed by the High Court in February, which seemed to be the last legal hurdle for the project, but the group appealed against this ruling. The campaigners argued that this dismissal was incorrect and the group has been granted an appeal hearing which is taking place from today, 15 July, until Wednesday, 17 July, at the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

The campaigners are hopeful that the change of government will see the new Labour regime cancel the scheme. This would “save us all a lot of time and money” and “spare our international blushes and rebuild this country’s reputation for looking after its heritage” according to Stonehenge Alliance chair John Adams.

Ahead of arriving at court this afternoon, the Stonehenge Alliance, the group behind SSWHS, is delivering a petition to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Transport (DfT) showing 240,000 signatories from 147 countries who oppose the scheme.

The petition also states that “future generations would be appalled at those who decided that road widening should be at the expense of England’s most iconic World Heritage Site”.

It further argues: “If A303 widening at Stonehenge is felt to be essential it should be done by means of a deep bored tunnel at least 4.5km long. Anything shorter would cause irreparable damage to this landscape, in breach of the World Heritage Convention.”

This last point is in accordance with Unesco, which has long argued that the historic landscape – which is considered a crucial part of the overall World Heritage Site – would be better preserved by a longer tunnel that would not see any road exposed within the heritage site. National Highways and the DfT have continually dismissed this idea due to cost. Unesco is meeting next week and has recommended that Stonehenge be added to its “World Heritage in Danger” list due to the threat of the A303 scheme as it stands.

National Highways said it is “not able to comment on scheme specifics while the legal process is ongoing”.

Cost of scheme

A freedom of information request submitted by the BBC to National Highways has revealed that £166.2M of public money has been spent on the scheme to the end of May, despite it not having broken ground on main construction.

This includes £287,605 spent on legal fees defending the scheme. It has also spent £4.6M on hiring more than 100 archaeologists to start digging around the site last spring. This work has been halted due to the legal challenge.

National Highways’ official cost for the scheme remains at £1.7bn, but this figure has not been updated for some years.

The Stonehenge Alliance believes that an updated cost for the scheme is “at least £2.5bn” and is “likely to exceed £3bn with construction inflation and probable cost overruns”. This would put the cost of the scheme at over £200,000 per metre of road constructed.

“Furthermore, at a time when urgent action on climate change is required, building a scheme that will increase emissions by over 2.5bn tonnes of carbon doesn’t make sense,” Stonehenge Alliance chair John Adams added. “It will make things harder.

“Nearly a quarter of a million people want the new Labour government to scrap the scheme straight away. They want to see more benign solutions that respect the World Heritage Site’s unique landscape. Not only would scrapping the scheme rescue the UK’s international reputation for caring for its heritage, it would save the Treasury a small fortune.”

Stonehenge Alliance president Tom Holland said: “Any scheme that manages to be at once ineffective, hugely damaging and grotesquely expensive is ripe for cancellation. The new government should seize the opportunity to consign the Stonehenge Tunnel to the dustbin where it belongs.”

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