Campaigners hail ‘wonderful’ move to cancel Stonehenge road tunnel scheme

Controversial plans to upgrade the A303 with a tunnel near Stonehenge have been halted, Rachel Reeves has said as she set out cuts to public spending.

The announcement was part of a review of projects which the Chancellor said was launched in response to £1 billion of unfunded commitments to transport schemes next year.

Ms Reeves said the Government “would not move forwards” with projects including works on the A303, where a dual carriageway tunnel was set to be built in the World Heritage Site surrounding the ancient stone circle, and the A27 Arundel bypass, as well as plans to reopen closed railway lines.

The Government labelled the road schemes as “low value, unaffordable commitments” which would have cost £587 million next year.

Heritage campaigners have long fought the £1.7 billion plans for a two-mile tunnel as part of an eight-mile overhaul of the A303 near Salisbury.

The scheme was approved in 2023 by the previous government despite warnings from Planning Inspectorate officials it would cause “permanent, irreversible harm” to the area.

The A303 is a congestion hotspot, with drivers heading to and from the South West during peak holiday periods often stuck in long queues.

But campaigners say the road upgrade plans, with the entrances to the tunnel within the World Heritage Site, would destroy archaeology and cause huge harm to the landscape around the neolithic monument which is dotted with ancient remains.

The Stonehenge Alliance welcomed the move to cancel the scheme – which it says would now cost £2.5 billion with inflation, damage the Stonehenge landscape and would not represent value for money.

John Adams, chair of the Stonehenge Alliance said: “National Highways’ misguided project was called out for what it was: low value and unaffordable. It was also highly damaging.

“Now that it has been scrapped, we need to move on. As soon as the budget is there, we need to ensure, as a priority, that local traffic is better managed and rail access to the South West improved.”

Tom Holland, historian and president of the Stonehenge Alliance, added: “This is wonderful news.

“This entire monstrous project, a proposal to drive a gash of concrete and tarmac through our most sacred prehistoric landscape, should never have got off the drawing board.

“That cancelling it will also save £2.5 billion is obviously an additional perk.”

Greenpeace UK’s political campaigner, Ami McCarthy, said: “Ditching expensive white elephant road building schemes, which have been long fought by many local campaigners, is a wise move.

“However, putting the brakes on the reopening of old railway lines would be counterproductive in delivering the job creation and prosperity that her government is promising.

“In order to rebuild our economy in the way that Rachel Reeves would like, the government must borrow to invest in renewable energy projects, a mass programme to insulate homes, and the scaling up of public transport.”

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: “These budget cuts have created more questions than answers about exactly when we’ll start to see the Government improve the condition of Britain’s broken roads.”

He warned the cancellation of the A27 Arundel bypass, from which Labour had promised to allocate £320 million for potholes “doesn’t scratch the surface of the problem”.

And he said it was not yet clear whether £8.3 billion from the cancelled northern leg of HS2 would be spent on local road maintenance over the next 11 years as promised by the previous government.