Legal challenge launched over A303 tunnel

CAMPAIGNERS fighting to block a controversial road project which includes a tunnel near Stonehenge have launched a High Court challenge over the Government’s decision to give the development the green light.

Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site has applied to the court for judicial review of Transport Secretary Grant Shapps’ decision to grant development consent to the project.

Mr Shapps gave the go-ahead for the £1.7 billion plan to overhaul eight miles of the A303, including the two-mile tunnel, in November, despite advice from Planning Inspectorate officials that it would cause “permanent, irreversible harm” to the Unesco World Heritage Site in Wiltshire.

A panel of expert inspectors recommended that consent should be withheld because the project would substantially and permanently harm the integrity and authenticity of the site, which includes the stone circle and the wider archaeology-rich landscape.

In a report to Mr Shapps, the officials said permanent, irreversible harm, critical to the outstanding universal value of the site of international importance would occur, “affecting not only our own, but future generations”.

The Department for Transport wrote to Highways England stating that: “The Secretary of State is satisfied that, on balance, the case for the development together with the other benefits identified outweigh any harm.”

Campaign group Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site will argue that the scheme is contrary to the Wiltshire Core Strategy and the requirements of the World Heritage Convention, and that Mr Shapps’ decision to approve it was unlawful.

The campaign group will also contend that Mr Shapps’ decision involved a failure to consider whether giving the go-ahead for the project could amount to a breach of international obligations under the World Heritage Convention.

As of Wednesday, a crowdfunding page to fund the legal action had raised £47,371 in donations.

Historian, author and broadcaster Tom Holland, president of the Stonehenge Alliance, whose supporters set up SSWHS to bring the legal action, said: “Bearing in mind the weight of opposition to the Government’s plans for a highly intrusive road scheme through the Stonehenge landscape, it is hard to believe that the Transport Secretary has given them the green light.

“The Planning Inspectorate, after a painstaking, six-month investigation, advised against them.

“So too, appalled by the damage the Government’s plans would inflict on a World Heritage Site, did Unesco.

“How the public feel can be gauged by the fact that over £46,000 has been raised to take the Government to court over the plans in only a few weeks.

“Let us hope that the law can come to the rescue of a landscape that ranks as our most precious and sacred, and which the Government, to its eternal shame, is set on handing over to the bulldozers.”

The road, which is a popular route for motorists travelling to and from the South West, is often severely congested on the single carriageway stretch near the stones.

Highways England says its plan for a two-mile tunnel will remove the sight and sound of traffic passing the site and cut journey times.

> How the eastern entrance to the new tunnel near Stonehenge could look