Campaigners bidding to cease a deliberate however now scrapped highway tunnel close to Stonehenge would have misplaced a authorized bid in opposition to the proposals, the Court of Appeal has dominated.
Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) was interesting a choice to refuse a problem to permitted plans to construct a two-mile tunnel close to the world well-known landmark. It would have overhauled eight miles of the A303 from Amesbury to Berwick Down in Wiltshire.
At a listening to in July, SSWHS argued approval for the event in July 2023 by Huw Merriman, then-minister of state for rail and HS2, breached an obligation to behave pretty.
Days later, Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed the Government “would not move forwards” with the venture as she set out cuts to public spending, together with on a raft of infrastructure tasks. The transfer to scrap the tunnel dismayed locals.
The Department for Transport (DfT) had defended the attraction and in a ruling on Wednesday (October 16) Sir Keith Lindblom, sitting with Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, rejected SSWHS’s bid.
The judges mentioned the subject material of the choice was “liable to generate controversy and debate”, given Stonehenge’s “cultural importance on both the national and international plain”.
In their 60-page ruling, the judges defined that their job was “not to gauge the environmental or societal merits of the development proposed”, however to be “concerned only with the lawfulness of the decision actually made”.
The judges mentioned they thought the DfT was “lawfully entitled” to approve the proposal, including the scheme was “directed at two significant problems”. These being the “high levels of traffic congestion on that stretch of the A303” and the “presence in the World Heritage Site of a major road on which movement of vehicles is both visible and audible from the henge”.
The courtroom heard the venture was permitted by the earlier authorities regardless of warnings from officers it might trigger “permanent, irreversible harm” and “would introduce a greater physical change” to the encompassing panorama than that which has occurred in its 6,000 yr historical past.
SSWHS alleged in the course of the listening to in July that the Department’s strategy to the environmental affect evaluation was “unlawful” in relation to the cumulative impact of greenhouse gasoline emissions from the event consent scheme and different dedicated highway schemes”.
James Strachan, representing the DfT, said Mr Merriman “was supplied with no additional recommendation on this difficulty” of harm to Stonehenge.
National Highways’ plan had been quashed by the High Court in July 2021 over concerns about the environmental impact on the site. Two years later the tunnel was approved by the DfT.
SSWHS brought further legal action against the department in December 2023 after the plan was re-approved by the then-government, the court heard.
In their ruling, the judges said that “affordable views could differ” and when the Secretary of State is determining an application for development consent the scope for a “affordable” planning decision on the issues for them to resolve is “broad”.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1963064/stonehenge-tunnel-court-of-appeal-decision