Campaigners lose court battle over scrapped Stonehenge traffic tunnel

Campaigners opposed to the last government’s plans to build a road tunnel through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site lost their Court of Appeal challenge today. The tunnel will not be built anyway as the current government scrapped the scheme in July. Campaign group the Stonehenge Alliance had brought a series of legal challenges to long-discussed plans to widen the notoriously congested A303 and sink it into a 3.3km-long tunnel as it passes the site of the monument. It won a judicial review of the scheme in 2021 [2021] EWHC 2161 (Admin); [2021] PLSCS 140. The government reconsidered and again approved the project. The Stonehenge Alliance appealed again, saying the reconsideration was procedurally unfair. In February this year, they lost, with High Court judge Mr Justice Colgate ruling that their points were “unarguable” [2024] EWHC 339 (Admin). The group then took the case to the Court of Appeal. The case was heard in mid-July, a few days after Labour won the UK general election. At the end of the month, a week after the case had finished and the judges had reserved judgment, chancellor Rachel Reeves said the government had chosen not to “move forward with the project”. Even so, according to today’s ruling, in August the Government Legal Department wrote to the Court of Appeal Civil Division to say that they continued to maintain that the previous government’s decision to green-light the project was legal and the Stonehenge Alliance still disagreed. Both parties asked the court to give a ruling. “Having considered the parties’ request that we continue to give our judgment and decide the appeal, even though the proposed development now seems unlikely to be constructed, we accept that we should do so,” the judgment said. “The development consent order remains extant, authorising the works, and the claim for judicial review and subsequent appeal have not been withdrawn. In the circumstances we are satisfied that the appeal before us is not merely academic.” In a detailed 60-page ruling they dismissed all seven grounds of the Stonehenge Alliance’s challenge. R (on the application of Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport and others [2024] EWCA Civ 1227; [2024] PLSCS 183 Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Lindblom, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, Lord Justice Lewis) 16 October 2024 Photo © Nik/Unsplash