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Today Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) learnt that its judicial review of the Government’s decision to approve a highly damaging, £2.5bn road scheme through Stonehenge World Heritage Site, for a second time, had been unsuccessful. Mr Justice Holgate in handing down his judgement today dismissed the application. SSWHS have said that they intend to appeal the decision.
The judgement comes after a 3 day hearing in the High Court in December. UNESCO, five planning inspectors and over 236,000 people were all opposed to National Highways’ highly damaging plans. Save Stonehenge WHS’s legal action had been the only thing stopping the giant earthmovers from entering this 5,000-year-old landscape.
John Adams, chair of the Stonehenge Alliance and one of the 3 directors of SSWHS, said:
“In the face of Government indifference to the harm this road will cause the World Heritage Site, we had no choice but to bring this legal action. While this judgement is a huge blow and exposes the site to National Highway’s state sponsored vandalism, we will continue the fight. In the dying days of this Conservative Government, which has inflicted so much damage on the country, we cannot let it destroy our heritage as well.”
Tom Holland, historian and president of the Stonehenge Alliance, said:
“This is a devastating loss, not just for everyone who has campaigned against the Government’s pig-headed plans for the Stonehenge landscape, but for Britain, for the world, and for subsequent generations.”
SSWHS successfully raised over £80,000 to bring this action. SSWHS will now have to raise a further £15,000 in order to apply for permission to appeal at the Court of Appeal. If a hearing is granted, a further £40,000 could be required.
The CrowdJustice page has a new interim target of £100,000. This is to raise the additional funds needed to make an application for permission to appeal (at the Court of Appeal). If a hearing is granted, the CrowdJustice target is likely to need to rise to around £140,000.
The saga of opposition to the tunnel at Stonehenge continues. The Stonehenge Alliance issued an update bulletin earlier this week:
We now have the date for the court hearing
It will be a ‘rolled up hearing’ where permission to be heard and the full case are held at the same time. It will begin on Tuesday, 12th December at the Royal Courts of Justice in London and is scheduled to run for three days. The last day will be Thursday, 14th.
When will the judgment be handed down?
Probably in the new year, The judge has not yet been announced but it could be Mr Justice Holgate who heard the previous judicial review.
Why should the Transport Secretary’s decision be thrown out?
The hearing will be the legal team’s chance to make the case as to why the decision should be thrown out again. This will probably be harder this time round as the Government has at least made a pretence of considering alternative options. Nonetheless, there are several grounds where the team feels the decision has erred in law, including proper consideration of alternatives, These should give the judge strong reasons to quash the decision again, but it will all hang on legal arguments made by the KCs.
It’s a nerve-wracking time and the target hasn’t been reached!
Over 2,000 generous donors have contributed to Save Stonehenge WHS’s appeal. This is an amazing result despite straightened circumstances. BUT the CrowdJustice target is short by around £18,000. To ensure the very best possible outcome please share the crowdfunder below with one or two. It’s a hackneyed expression, but every little bit really does help.
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Supporters have been helping in all sorts of ways
200 of our new leaflets were distributed outside the National Trust AGM last week. You can order leaflets here (free of charge) to distribute where you live, local museum or library, to help raise awareness of the threat to the World Heritage Site.
Some supporters are plotting and planning to sell merchandise to support the cause. We will let you have the details as soon as we have them.
Would you like to join us at the Royal Courts of Justice in London?
Please reply to his email if you would like to come and we will send you the details.
As ever, thanks so much for your support.
Best wishes,
The Stonehenge Alliance team
A press release from the Stonehenge Alliance:
Last August, Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS), the group challenging the latest decision, submitted its case to the High Court. By now, we would have expected to let you know whether the High Court had agreed the Government had a case to answer. But that’s not how it’s turned out and SSWHS are still waiting to hear back from the court. Meanwhile, here’s our news.
UNESCO stands firm
On 15 September, a statement was made to the World Heritage Committee meeting in Riyadh on our behalf. The Committee expressed its
“profound regret that the Scheme has been granted a DCO [Development Consent Order] without having been modified in accordance with previous Committee decisions and the recommendations of the 2022 mission.”
UNESCO stood firm on their decision to place the Stonehenge WHS on the list of Heritage in Danger if the Stonehenge road scheme goes ahead. And the UNESCO news about Stonehenge was widely reported. This generated numerous enquiries.
Answering FAQs
As a result of this feedback, we have reorganised our homepage to answer the most frequently asked question: “What’s wrong with the A303 Stonehenge road scheme?“
There are nine answers to this question, each with a couple of sentences in reply. You can also link through to a more in-depth briefing on each topic.
The second most frequently asked question is: “What is the latest position”? A new page sums up the position and is updated regularly. Take a look!
SSWHS needs to raise a further £25,000
Thanks to your generosity, around £55,000 has been raised. But to bring the total to the necessary £80,000, a further £25,000 is needed. If you can contribute, however little, please click on this button.
Videos launched to help SSWHS raise money
Watch our first two videos below. The first includes our late Kate Fielden, succinctly describing the problems with the Stonehenge road. John Adams explains the latest position in the second video.
And finally, the inconsistency of cancelling HS2
We call out Rishi Sunak for cancelling HS2 on grounds of cost without scrapping the A303 Stonehenge Tunnel. The economic benefits of the Stonehenge project are vanishingly small, if they exist at all. Take a look at our briefing about the weak case for the A303 Stonehenge.
Thanks for supporting our campaign. We hope common sense will prevail.
Best wishes,
The Stonehenge Alliance team
By Nigel Swift
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The fuss this has caused has been massive
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But just wait until they hide Stonehenge!
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Historic England is “very sad” to hear about the loss of the Sycamore Gap tree, The National Trust is “shocked and saddened” and English Heritage is “shocked and utterly dismayed”.Yet all are supporting the removal of the free view of Stonehenge from tens of millions of the travelling public.
Something is wrong.
National Highways, famous for failing to inform, might wish to explain these two images.
Which of the two is correct, which is the latest, why are the six shafts misaligned, who added them, not an engineer, surely?
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Following the revised decision earlier this year to allow the tunnel to go ahead at Stonehenge, our friends at the Stonehenge Alliance have filed another claim with the High Court, challenging the Government’s decision to approve this monstrosity of a road scheme through the World Heritage Site.
In order to fund this, a further appeal for funds has been launched to pay for the work the legal team will now have to do preparing for court and rebutting the Government’s arguments, and donations can be pledged here.
And just this week, a delegation from the Stonehenge Alliance took a trip to Paris, in order to deliver a message to UNESCO about the public concern for the future of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site – UNESCO have already announced that the World Heritage Status of the site is in danger of being withdrawn if the tunnel goes ahead.
World Heritage Sites are inscribed on the World Heritage List because they have Outstanding Universal Value. This means that a site has such exceptional significance as “to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations.”
If you can, please donate to the fighting fund and help the Stonehenge Alliance Appeal!
By Myghal Map Serpren
Sir Philip Rutnam, who was the Civil Service Permanent Secretary at the Home Office until 2020, currently serves as Chair of the National Churches Trust, which works to keep Britain’s church buildings open and in use by awarding grants, promoting churches as community hubs and places to visit and by advocacy and lobbying.
Churches not only constitute the largest collection of listed buildings in Britain, but are also home to countless historic artefacts and priceless art.
Writing recently, Sir Phillip launched a five-point plan for keeping these historic buildings open and accessible. In his wide-ranging article, he pointed out that there are 39,000 buildings used for Christian worship across the country of which almost 20,000 have been listed.
Mostly all of these are parish churches and chapels and those churches and chapels include nearly half of Britain’s most important historic buildings being Grade I listed or equivalent.
It is true to say that church buildings are an important base for voluntary and community activities and continue to reduce social isolation and build community spirit.
At this time and perhaps a comment on the times in which we find ourselves, earlier are now more food banks than branches of MacDonalds and a great number of these charitable resources are found in church buildings.
In ‘The House of Good’, a recent independent evaluation for the National Churches Trust using the same methodology for appraising projects as that found in the Treasury’s so-called ‘Green Book’, it has been conservatively estimated that the economic and social value of the activity in church buildings amounts to around £55bn a year.
However, there is a real crisis facing church heritage.
Wales
In Wales, at least two-thirds of the chapels that were once open have now closed.
In the last two decades, the Church in Wales has closed 15 per cent of its churches and expects the rate of closure to increase in coming years.
At the time of writing, nine can be found for sale on the Church in Wales website, from Monmouthshire to the Menai Strait.
Scotland
The Church of Scotland, guardian of many of the country’s most important buildings, is bracing for the closure of perhaps 30 to 40 per cent of its churches.
Some have already appeared on its website for sale, including Old High Kirk, the oldest church in Inverness.
Others are still going through the process of closure such as Saint Monans in Fife, endowed in the 14th century by David II, King of Scots, which served as a Dominican oratory by the sea and stands as one of Scotland’s most important mediaeval buildings.
England
Across England, the current model of maintaining these buildings is under obvious strain, above all in places that are poor, isolated, or both.
The Church of England says its backlog for repairs is at least £1bn, and one estimate says it is growing at £75m a year.
The causes of this crisis are many; falling congregations, a fall in the volunteering ethos, impoverished communities burdened with building maintenance amongst them.
Compared with most other European countries, funding for churches and chapels in Britain is rather different.
As Sir Philip points out, although the church and state are closely and constitutionally linked, church buildings receive no regular public funding.
Elsewhere
In France, a more secular state, cathedrals are maintained by the national government and churches by local authorities. As an example, President Macron appointed a former chief of the French defence staff to oversee the reconstruction of Notre Dame.
In other countries, the most common form of financial support is by way of a church tax covering anyone who is a member of the church, whether or not they attend.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and most of Scandinavia operate systems like this, and in each case ‘membership’ is somewhere between common and near-universal.
Italy, Spain and Portugal offer more choice but still have millions of people voluntarily paying to support churches.
Italy has the ‘otto per mille’ system which allows taxpayers to choose where 0.8 per cent of their income tax is spent among a list of causes resulting in more than 80 per cent selecting churches.
Compare all this with the arrangement in Britain where the burden of keeping up these buildings rests almost entirely on the congregation, the people who actually attend services.
A community which is modest in numbers or income can find itself facing an enormous repair bill for a significant building.
Five ideas
So what can be done to address Britain’s greatest heritage challenge?
No single actor can fix this: action is needed by churches locally, denominations nationally, and by the government itself.
Sir Philip lists five ideas:
- First, the government needs to recognise that these buildings are a public good for both heritage and community, and that it is not realistic for the whole burden to rest on local shoulders. In fact, successive governments used to recognise this: from the 1970s until 2017 there was dedicated grant funding for listed places of worship, running at up to £40m a year. This ringfenced pot was abolished by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and since then the Lottery funding for churches and chapels has fallen from £46m in 2018–2019 to £11m in 2022–2023. The Fund is now changing tack in a way that is welcome, but the scale and urgency of the problem demand further action by both government and the Fund.
- Second, the national denominations need to provide much more practical support to congregations, not least offering more specialist advice on building maintenance and widening the range of uses, as well as collecting much better information on the condition of their assets. The Roman Catholic Church has done excellent work on this in recent years. Churches themselves should be more strongly encouraged to be open and accessible.
- Third, we should do more to realise the unexploited potential of these buildings for visitors and tourism, including for pilgrimage. In Northern France and Belgium, 56 belfries are grouped together as one World Heritage Site. Why not promote the wool churches of Norfolk and Suffolk as something similar? Or the towers of Somerset, or the Christian conversion sites of Wales and northern Britain, associated with the Irish saints who arrived in the 5th–7th centuries?
- Fourth, public bodies need to stop being afraid of engaging with faith groups, Christian or otherwise. A wealth of evidence shows the positive social impacts and the reach that they can have. There are some good tools available, not least the Faith Covenant produced by the Faith and Society All-Party Parliamentary Group, which takes the form of a set of principles to promote practical collaboration between religious groups and local authorities.
- Finally, we do need to start exploring new models of keeping some of our most rural and isolated buildings alive, while recognising that this is a long-term task and no substitute for fixing the roof and supporting heroic volunteers.
The National Churches Trust has an impressive record assisting to keep up to 2,000 churches and chapels open and available to their communities, making grants which have removed 14 buildings from the heritage at risk register during 2021 alone and paying out in excess of £5 million to needy church structures during 2021.
As Sir Philip points out, “Britain’s churches are a huge national asset, available for all to visit, use and benefit from. It’s time to ensure that as many as possible are properly supported so that these wonderful historic buildings can thrive today and tomorrow.”
Links:
A press release from Hands Off Old Oswestry Hillfort (HOOOH):
A 10-year battle to protect the landscape of one of Britain’s most important Iron Age hillforts from widely opposed development comes to a head this week.
Cameron Homes’ application to build a luxury housing estate in the landscape setting of Old Oswestry Hillfort will be decided by Shropshire Council’s north planning committee at a meeting this Friday (July 28th) at Shirehall in Shrewsbury.
Although Shropshire planners are recommending approval, campaigners say that there are strong grounds to refuse the hugely unpopular application.
Local campaign group, HOOOH, said: “All eyes will be on the north planning committee this Friday. Their decision will seal the fate of one of Shropshire’s and Britain’s greatest archaeological landmarks. We trust they will balance all the evidence in their decision, including the irreversible damage that will be inflicted on a unique heritage site and the substantial local and national opposition to development.”
Local objectors include Oswestry Town Council, North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan, Oswestry & Border Archaeology & History Group, Cambrian Heritage Railways Ltd, and Oswestry and District Civic Society. Objections have also come from The Prehistoric Society, Council for British Archaeology, RESCUE (The British Archaeological Trust), Historic Buildings and Places. Additionally, members of the public have submitted 128 letters against and 12,000 objectors have signed a petition during the longstanding campaign to protect the setting of the site acclaimed as the ‘Stonehenge of the Iron Age’.
HOOOH continues: “Refusal is warranted if the proposals do not meet the special conditions enshrined in SAMDev policy S14 as agreed in the Statement of Common Ground with Historic England. These are meant to ensure the harm to heritage is minimised and the public benefits weighing against this harm are delivered. They also underpinned the Inspector’s decision to allocate the site for development.
“But a number of conditions are simply not being met. These are the northern limit for development, the provision of walking and cycling access along and across the Cambrian Railway, and improvements to the junction of Whittington Road and Gobowen Road.
“Given the overwhelming opposition to the plans, Shropshire Council must respect and adhere to policy and underpinning agreements for controversial development, or we seriously undermine public trust in the local planning process.”
Nuanced
While the planners’ report to the committee places great weight on the fact that Historic England has not objected, the position of the heritage consultee is much more nuanced, say campaigners.
“Historic England signed a Statement of Common Ground with conditions for development that are easily tested and form part of the legal framework of SAMDev which Shropshire Council must adhere to.
“Historic England has also stressed that views will see ‘extensive’ and ‘substantial change’ and that planners must be sure that proposals meet the requirements of the NPPF. We believe there is a strong case that they do not.”
Campaigners have also raised concerns that the Council’s landscape consultant and conservation manager, key consultees on heritage, have remained on the fence over the proposals. This is despite both acknowledging that development would lead to ‘substantial change’ within the landscape and ‘the majority of landscape and visual effects are adverse.’
The Council for British Archaeology warns that although not ‘substantial’ in planning terms – which would be destruction of the asset itself – these impacts still constitute harm as defined by the NPPF. The Prehistoric Society calls it ‘a very significant level of harm’ relative to the monument’s significance, which would normally lead to refusal of the planning application.
Written representation
In its written representation ahead of the meeting, HOOOH states that, contrary to NPPF paragraph 199, the planners’ assessment does not give appropriate weight to Old Oswestry’s significance as a designated heritage asset, especially when ‘the more important the asset, the greater the weight should be’.
HOOOH goes on to say that, contrary to NPPF paragraph 200, planners have not provided ‘clear and convincing justification’ for what would be significant harm to the setting of a designated heritage asset of national significance. Campaigners insist that planners have not adequately demonstrated that the loss or harm is necessary when the 83 houses can be built elsewhere, given that more than sufficient housing land has been identified for Oswestry’s future growth, including east of the A5 bypass.
They add that planning consent could set a precedent for further damaging development across the hillfort’s eastern setting.
The HOOOH campaign will be attending the meeting with support from the heritage sector in the form of an expert witness.
Proceedings start at 2pm and can be viewed remotely via the live streaming link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqCY87aT_cI
Link to planning documents: https://pa.shropshire.gov.uk/online-applications/centralDistribution.do?caseType=Application&keyVal=ROP3QZTDLRX00
HOOOH have recently released the following statement (HOOOH is Hands Off Old Oswestry Hillfort, the campaign to safeguard the setting of Old Oswestry hillfort from development.):
Campaigners have escalated public concerns over the controversial bid to build housing in the setting of Old Oswestry hillfort by calling in the planning application for committee determination.
Campaign group HOOOH has submitted paperwork asking for the widely opposed scheme for 83 houses to be decided by Shropshire Council’s North Planning Committee and not delegated to planning officers.
North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan has backed the move, having already submitted objections to the planning application. She contacted HOOOH to confirm that she has written to Shropshire Council urging them to ensure that the proposals go before committee in the interests of ‘justice, accountability and fair play’.
In an update, Mrs Morgan told campaigners that Shropshire’s development manager, Philip Mullineux, had replied to say that no decision had yet been made on who would determine the application. HOOOH says it received the same response in February and at the beginning of April.
Planning applications can be called in for a variety of reasons under Shropshire’s scheme of delegation.
HOOOH has asked Oswestry Town Council to initiate a call-in as a local council stakeholder that has objected to the proposals. Campaigners have also written to Shropshire councillors, Chris Schofield and John Price, requesting their assistance with a call-in as the relevant council members for Oswestry.
In their correspondence HOOOH wrote: “As you will be aware, there has been 10 years of significant and sustained local opposition to development on OSW004 expressed through the local planning process and several development planning applications. There has also been opposition at national level from British heritage bodies due to the heritage significance of Old Oswestry.
“Those against include:
- Oswestry Town Council
- North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan
- Oswestry Civic Society
- Cambrian Heritage Railways
- Oswestry & Border History & Archaeology Group
- 12,000+ objectors through local and online petition
- The Prehistoric Society
- British Archaeological Trust (RESCUE)
- Council for British Archaeology
- Historic Buildings & Places (Ancient Monuments Society)
- Hillfort expert, Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe
- 12 leading academics of British archaeology
“Given the significant public interest in this planning bid, we believe it would be unfair and undemocratic for the decision to be delegated to planning officers. This would deny the opportunity for a highly engaged public to make their final representations and for elected councillors to scrutinise and balance the evidence, including the many objections based on material considerations, concerning a highly controversial bid.”
Cameron Homes is behind the latest application to build a substantial housing estate across currently unspoilt fields forming part of the hillfort’s heritage setting and providing vital separation of the Iron Age monument from Oswestry town.
English Heritage, the national guardian of the hillfort, has described Old Oswestry as ‘one of the greatest archaeological monuments of the nation’.
HOOOH maintains that the proposals fail on numerous material points, including SAMDev local planning policy for Oswestry (S14a) and the supporting Statement of Common Ground signed by Historic England and Shropshire Council.
Key objections to the application include:
- Exceeds a northern limit for development
- No access over the Cambrian heritage railway line
- No associated works to Whittington Road and Gobowen Road junction
- Lack of appropriate regard for Old Oswestry’s heritage significance
- Does not meet NPPF national planning policy regarding heritage impacts
Concurring with objections made by Oswestry Town Council, HOOOH also says that the development would be poorly located in relation to the town centre and essential facilities and would add to traffic chaos in an already congested part of the town.
A HOOOH spokesperson said: “Cameron Homes’ scheme does not appear to comply with the policy or heritage agreement in SAMDev governing development on the OSW004 site. It is only right that the application goes before committee so that our elected members can ensure that the policy and heritage protection they approved are upheld.”
ENDS
The following update was recently released by our friends, the Stonehenge Alliance.
“The Mission again raised the question regarding the potential impacts on the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) attributes of the property, arising particularly from impacts on the integrity and authenticity of the Neolithic and Bronze Age funerary landscape and hence the exploration of alternatives to the A303 passing through the very heart of the WHS and so close to key monuments.”
New Transport Secretary consulting on UNESCO’s Advisory Mission’s report
Dear Supporters,
National Highways has commented on UNESCO’s Advisory Mission’s report following their visit of April 2022 published last month.
Last week, during a period of national mourning, the new Transport Secretary invited Interested Parties to respond to NH’s comments by 28 September. Despite this tight deadline we hope you will be able to do so.
The Mission advised that a less damaging scheme, such as a southern bypass, should be sought and indicated that, at the very least, any tunnel should be extended to the western WHS boundary. National Highways insists that its current scheme would bring benefits to the WHS and that a longer tunnel would not be worth the expense.
The Stonehenge Alliance will send a response to the Secretary of State and share its response in due course.
If you wish to respond we have shared some reactions and links via the link below.
About the Stonehenge Alliance
The Stonehenge Alliance is a group of non-governmental organisations and individuals that seeks enhancements to the Stonehenge World Heritage Site and opposes development that would cause it significant harm..
More about us
The petition against the road has almost reached 220,000 signatures. You can sign and share it here.
The Heritage Journal 
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