The High Court of the United Kingdom brutally put an end to the designs of the British government by ruling "
illegal
" the construction of a road tunnel next to the Stonehenge site. The Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site group questioned Transport Minister Grant Schapps' decision to support the project. He planned to create a tunnel of three kilometers, 200m from the site at a cost of 1.6 billion pounds (1.8 billion euros). The group - which had raised more than 80,000 pounds to finance its legal costs through a crowdfunding campaign - described the decision on Friday as a "
wake-up call for the government
".
Read also: Archaeologists, activists and druids demonstrate against the tunnel at the Stonehenge site
At the hearing, the judge ruled that the Minister of Transport had not considered alternative solutions that could cause less damage, nor assessed the risk of damage as required by law.
The plan to transform the current A303 motorway, approved by Boris Johnson's government last year, called for a two-lane tunnel near the historic site, with the aim of decongesting the motorway.
Archaeologists and environmental groups have welcomed the decision. “
We could not be more delighted with the outcome of this legal challenge,
” said John Adams, director of the Save Stonehenge group, in a statement. “
Ideally, such a tunnel would start and end outside the World Heritage site.
", He added, before specifying that due to the climate emergency, all new road projects should aim to reduce traffic and eliminate the need to build new highways.
The site of Stonehenge in England dates from prehistoric times and is still a popular place, especially during summer solstice rituals. A few weeks ago, Mechtild Rössler the director of the Unesco World Heritage Center had suggested that sites like Stonehenge could be classified in the list of monuments in danger if the authorities strove to "
badly advised development
" of such
sites.
projects. Unesco strongly opposed the construction of the tunnel in 2019. The British government has the possibility of appealing this decision.
