After the disappointing news from the Court of Appeal, we’ve decided to make an application to the Supreme Court. We believe the issues at stake: the protection of World Heritage Sites and that ministers should know the detail of what they’re taking a decision on, are too important to be left hanging. Plus of course the planning permission for the proposed new road and tunnel remains in place and could be resurrected at any time should the politicians change their minds (up to 4 August 2028).

Before making this decision, we asked our supporters what they wanted to do, and overwhelmingly they said we should continue, at least for the moment. We now have to get our application in to the Supreme Court before the end of November. However, we’re unlikely to hear back for 4 – 5 months as to whether we’ve been successful or not.

Most of the costs for doing this are already covered but we are still a few thousand short if you are able to spare anything towards this case.

Many thanks,

Chris, John and Mike

Sadly, on Wednesday, 16^th October the Court of Appeal dismissed our application for Judicial Review. This means that the threat to the World Heritage Site remains as the planning permission for the scheme is still in place.

While we are disappointed with the judgment, the government’s withdrawal of public funding for the scheme and its effective cancellation is good news. However, should it change its mind, or decide to use private finance, there would be nothing that we could do to stop the scheme being built as things currently stand.

The fact that the court will only look at mistakes in process and not the veracity of evidence or arguments makes the job of challenging damaging developments extremely difficult.

This judgment is disappointing as it appears to give already powerful ministers even greater leeway to be ignorant of the facts. We shall be considering our options, including any application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, as this case could have wider implications for developments in World Heritage Sites and decision making in the planning system. This is in addition to the continued threat from the scheme’s approval.

Fantastic news! We’ve stopped the road! 

Today, the new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, cancelled the scheme, calling it a “low value, unaffordable commitment”. In doing so she has ended years of upset and concern.

Our huge thanks to everyone who has helped us win the battle and stop the dualling of the A303 across the World Heritage Site and the harm it would have caused.

However, while the scheme has been cancelled on affordability grounds, its planning permission remains intact. On that point, the Court of Appeal will still be considering its judgement on the legality of the decision to approve the scheme which we expect to be handed down in the Autumn. We will keep you posted on this.

In the meantime, savour our collective success!

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

We are now going to hold our photocall outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, at 1pm on Monday, 15 July. (Please turn up from 12:45pm for around half an hour or so)

This will mark the start of the three day hearing, which will now finish on the Wednesday (and not the Thursday as we were previously told). Unless of course, Labour scraps the scheme before then!

We’d love to see you there and hope you can make this new, earlier date.

Please continue to share the crowdfunder, as we still need to raise funds for the appeal.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

So the result of the general election is clear, people have voted for change. Now they will want to see that change delivered. One opportunity for the new Labour Government to demonstrate that it is capable of a different approach would be to cancel the Stonehenge road scheme. That would help restore our international standing and save a handy £2.5bn in the process, which will be needed for far more important things (than moving a traffic jam a few miles down the A303).

Yet while Parliament was suspended during the election, there was no such respite for our legal team who have been busy preparing for our hearing in just over a week’s time. Thanks to the fantastic public support we are getting closer to our fundraising target.

To mark the end of the hearing we will be holding a photocall outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, at 1pm on Thursday, 18 July. We’d love to see you there.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

While a lot has been happening in the general election battle over the past few weeks, transport has barely featured. However, that changed when leaders were asked about their position on the Stonehenge scheme. Keir Starmer refused to commit, Ed Davey said he was minded not to go ahead, with the Conservatives doubled down on it while claiming to be the party to protect our cultural heritage.

Then we had the controversy around Just Stop Oil throwing orange cornflour on the stones. But the biggest bombshell came with the news that UNESCO is recommending Stonehenge be placed on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. In a clear sign that UNESCO has lost patience; the report to its World Heritage Committee is littered with criticisms of both the scheme and the UK Government. The Committee is due to decide Stonehenge’s fate at the end of July.

The big news though is that the Appeal Court has fast-tracked our case which will now be heard in the week beginning 15 July for three or four days. So please put it in your diary as we may well hold an event outside the court on one of those days.

However, the big issue for us is that we still need to raise around £25,000 before the hearing in two and a half weeks’ time. So please share the Crowdfunder as widely as possible and donate if you can. With your help we can see off this devastating scheme once and for all.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

Good news! We’ve been given permission to appeal Mr Justice Holgate’s judgment that refused our request for a judicial review of the Government’s second attempt to approve this terrible road scheme. This shows that National Highways was premature in pressing ahead with its highly disruptive A360 works (in preparation for dualling the A303 at Stonehenge). It has potentially wasted millions of pounds of public money, as well as harming the local economy.

Our lawyers are now busy preparing for our hearing at the Court of Appeal sometime later this year. We will keep you updated as we find out more, but we need to raise another £34,000 to make the best possible case. So please consider donating if you can and sharing the crowdfunder with your friends and family.

In the meantime, we continue to highlight the damage this road will do, its unpopularity, and that its £3 billion or more cost would be better spent upgrading the rail network to and around the South West. This should go with better bus services and walking and cycling improvements. You can find out more about the campaign to stop the bulldozers on the Stonehenge Alliance website and how you can sign the petition against the road.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

Unfortunately, Justice Holgate today dismissed our legal challenge of the Government’s approval (for a second time) of a damaging dual carriageway through Stonehenge World Heritage Site. While this is deeply disappointing news, the battle isn’t over and we will be appealing his ruling.

However, to do this we need your support as we have to raise another £15,000 immediately to seek permission to appeal. So please consider donating if you can and sharing the crowdfunder with your friends and family. If we are successful, we will need to then fundraise for the court hearing.

We have a glimmer of hope in that our ground on cumulative greenhouse gas emissions has been stayed (put on hold). It is dependent on the outcome of another case in the Court of Appeal. Unfortunately, we cannot wait for that ruling before launching our appeal or we will be out of time. That’s why we are seeking to raise more funding immediately to pay for our legal team’s work preparing for the appeal.

In the meantime, please sign the petition and encourage others to do so too. We've had over 236,000 signatures so far. It would be great if we could get to over a quarter of a million!

You can find out more about the campaign to stop the bulldozers on the Stonehenge Alliance website.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

Many thanks to the thousands of people who have contributed to this crowdfunder. We have now raised enough to get us to court next week which is brilliant news. We could not have done it without you and are especially grateful for the £8,000 donation from Dale Vince at Ecotricity that got us over the line.

At this stage we don't need any more money, but we do need your continued support. Please sign the petition and encourage others to do so too. We've had over 230,000 signatures so far. It would be great if we could get to over a quarter of a million!

In the meantime, you can find out more about the campaign on the Stonehenge Alliance website.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

We’ve now been told that our court hearing will begin on Tuesday, 12th December at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It’s scheduled to run for three days and will be a rolled up hearing, where the permission to be heard and the full case are held at the same time. The last day will be Thursday, 14th. We will then have to wait, probably until the new year, for a judgement to be handed down. At this point in time we don’t know who the judge will be, although it could well be Mr Justice Holgate who heard our previous judicial review.

This will be our chance to make the case as to why the decision should be thrown out again. This will probably be harder this time as the Government has at least made a pretence of considering alternative options. Nonetheless, there are a number of grounds, including the consideration of alternatives, where we feel it has erred in law. These should give the judge strong reasons to quash the decision again.

To help us ensure we have the best possible case please continue to share the crowdfunder. We still need another £19,000 to meet our fundraising target, so every little helps.

Many thanks for your support,

Chris, John & Mike

As the world seems to be falling apart around us, we’ve learnt that our court case is likely to be sometime in December. It’s being allocated 3 days for what is known as a rolled up hearing, where the permission to be heard and the full case are held at the same time. At present, we don’t have any dates, but National Highways is pressing the courts to speed up the process so it can go ahead and start damaging the World Heritage Site early next year.

It is now clear that both National Highways and the Government are trying to rush through as many road schemes as they can before the Government gets thrown out at the next General Election. This is not about doing what is best for the country, but trying to buy votes and imposing an ideology on us all with little basis in facts or reality.

While Rishi Sunak has made a big deal about cutting HS2 north of Birmingham, claiming it is too expensive and the economic case no longer stacks up, he has not done the same thing for road building. Yet the economic case for the A303 at Stonehenge is far worse than for HS2 and should have been binned years ago.

We are the only thing standing between the bulldozers of this increasingly dysfunctional Government and the World Heritage Site. Please continue to help us protect our world heritage from short termism, corruption and greed. Please share and promote this crowdfunder far and wide.

Many thanks,

Chris, John & Mike

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee (WHC), meeting in Riyadh since 10^th September, has stuck to its guns and sent a strong message to the UK Government about its concern for Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS). It remains firmly opposed to the dualling of the A303 through Stonehenge WHS which will cause permanent and irreversible harm.

In its agreed statement (pages 86 - 91) the WHC:

7. Expresses profound regret that the Scheme has been granted a DCO without having been modified in accordance with previous Committee decisions and the recommendations of the 2022 mission;  

8. Reiterates its previous request that the State Party not proceed with the implementation of the Scheme for the section between Amesbury and Berwick Down in its current form … 

9. Further notes that the approved A303 road improvement scheme within the Stonehenge component of the property retains substantial dual carriageway sections exposed in cuttings, particularly those at the western end of the Stonehenge component of the property and that, at the present time, the A303 road improvement scheme, as approved by the DCO, constitutes a potential threat to the property, in conformity with Paragraph 179 of the Operational Guidelines, which, if implemented, would have deleterious impacts on the OUV of the property including its integrity, warranting inscription of the property on the List of World Heritage in Danger;  [our emphasis]

At the WHC meeting, the Stonehenge Alliance had a statement read out by a representative from Australian Marine (an Australian NGO).

We remain grateful that UNESCO remains firmly opposed to the road scheme and await the news from the courts as to whether we will receive permission to argue our case in court.

John Adams outside UNESCO headquarters in Paris

Yesterday, John Adams and Chris Todd, two of the directors of Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site, and members of the Stonehenge Alliance, took the Eurostar to Paris to meet with UNESCO officials. The purpose of the visit was to deliver a copy of our petition with its 225,000 signatures to make UNESCO aware of the strength of feeling against the Government's road building plans through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS).

We received a cordial welcome and had a productive meeting where we impressed upon them that we were the only thing standing between the Site and the bulldozers. We also made it clear that we welcomed their strong line on Stonehenge but that as far as we were concerned the UK Government had absolutely no intention of considering less damaging alternatives.

We agreed to keep them informed of any developments and we await the outcome of the World Heritage Committee meeting in Riyadh later this month. As far as the legal challenge is concerned, we are not expecting to hear anything from the courts for a month or so, but will let you know as soon as we do.

This week we filed our claim with the High Court, challenging the Government’s decision to approve this monstrosity of a road scheme through the World Heritage Site.

Now that we have moved on to the next stage of the process we need to raise our target to £80,000 to pay for the work the legal team will now have to do preparing for court and rebutting the Government’s arguments.

Thanks to the swift and generous response of our followers and supporters we’ve done fantastically well in raising as much as we have so quickly, but we still have some way to go. So please share and contribute to this crowdfunder where you can.

Many thanks,

Chris, John and Mike

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to and shared this crowdfunder so far. We have reached our initial target in just over 3 days which is amazing. It shows people's generosity and their strength of feeling about National Highways' proposed vandalism of the World Heritage Site.

We have now submitted the Pre-Application Protocol letter to the Government who have two weeks to respond. We will then submit our legal challenge before the 6 week deadline is up towards the end of August.

Now we need to continue fundraising to pay for the work that will go into developing our case and rebutting anything that the Government puts forward in its defence. We appreciate that getting to our next target of £50,000 will be challenging but it is well worth it in order to help us safeguard this iconic site for future generations.

In total, we will need to raise of the order of £80,000 as we did last time in 2021 when we successfully defeated the Government's approval of the new road. 

We will keep this page updated with any significant developments as they arise.

Chris, John and Mike