National Highways has closed a section of the A360 in Wiltshire for three months to enabling power cables for the tunnel project to be installed.
The A303 Stonehenge project needs an electricity supply for construction and for the tunnel once built. Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), working on behalf of National Highways, started work last week to install high voltage and fibre optic cabling.
A section of the A360 has been closed to the south of the A303 between Longbarrow roundabout and The Avenue roundabout until mid-July this year.
The Stonehenge Alliance, a campaign group hoping to stop the project, reckons that National Highways has jumped the gun and could be wasting its money on cabling if the courts uphold legal challenges.
It is calling for the Office for Rail & Road (ORR), the regulatory authority, to intervene.
Scheme opponents managed to get the original development consent order (DCO) quashed by the courts in 2021 but National Highways obtained another one last year. Campaigners filed a High Court claim against the new DCO last summer but just a few weeks ago judge David Holgate handed judgment in favour of National Highways. Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) is seeking leave to appeal.
John Adams, chair of the Stonehenge Alliance and one of the three directors of SSWHS, said:
“This work by National Highways ahead of any decision by the courts is premature and risks wasting even more public money in a hugely controversial scheme. Its arrogance seems to know no bounds. It is hell bent on jumping the gun, regardless of the misery it will cause local residents.
“If the courts find something wrong with the decision making then National Highways will have wasted millions of pounds of public money for no reason. It’s time that they were reined in and I hope that the ORR will take a long hard look at what is going on.”
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