The UK’s newly formed Labour government has wasted no time in trashing plans laid down by the Conservatives in 2020 to build a two-mile tunnel near Stonehenge.
Rachel Reeves, chancellor of the exchequer, told Parliament on Monday that the tunnel “would not move forward.” Scrapping the project, which had a proposed budget of $2.5 billion, is part of Labour’s mission to fill a fiscal hole that’s $30 billion deep.
A policy paper, also published on Monday, confirmed that the tunnel will not be built. “The government is cancelling the A303 Stonehenge tunnel and the A27 scheme [in West Sussex],” the paper reads. “These are low value, unaffordable commitments which would have cost £587 million [$753 million] next year.”
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The tunnel project was set to reroute the A303 road, which runs past the ancient stones, into a two-way tunnel, while the road would have been transformed into a public walkway.
Supporters of the plan argued that it would return the Stonehenge landscape to something like its original setting and give people more access to the surrounding World Heritage Site.
Not everyone shares this view. “This entire monstrous project, a proposal to drive a gash of concrete and tarmac through our most prehistoric landscape, should never have got off the drawing board,” Tom Holland, president of the Stonehenge Alliance campaign group, said.
English Heritage, a charity that manages Stonehenge, has another opinion. “English Heritage has been a strong supporter of the tunnel project, which would reunite the ancient landscape and allow more people to explore and enjoy this remarkable site,” it said. The charity added that it will continue talking to the government to “find a solution” for the site.
Nature and conservation charity, the National Trust, also slammed the move, saying, “a solution is needed to remove the hugely damaging surface road that blights Stonehenge and its surrounding landscape.”
Conservative minister Grant Shapps green-lighted the road tunnel in 2020 but the Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site campaign group took the government to court, stalling the project.
The tunnel was again approved in July last year by the Transport Department but Labour’s win now makes it dead in the water.
