Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced on Monday that the government is axing the previously approved tunnel that would bypass Stonehenge, in a bid to cut public spending.
Ms. Reeves told Parliament that the previous government had committed to an overspend of £1.6 billion in its transport budget.
The announcement was part of a review of projects which the chancellor said were launched in response to £1 billion in unfunded commitments to transport schemes next year.
Ms. Reeves said the government “would not move forward” with projects including works on the A303, where a dual carriageway tunnel was set to be built in the world heritage site surrounding Stonehenge, and the A27 Arundel bypass.
The chancellor also put a stop to the “Restoring our Railways scheme” to save an additional £85 million, further promising a review of the former government’s October 2020 pledge to build 40 new hospitals by 2030.
She confirmed her first budget will be announced on Oct. 30 and will involve “difficult decisions across welfare, spending, and tax.”
“If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it,” said the chancellor.
Ms. Reeves explained that Transport Secretary Louise Haigh would now undertake a “thorough review” of these transport commitments covering projects from roads to rail.
In her maiden speech as chancellor, Ms. Reeves told the House of Commons, “This is not the statement I wanted to give today, and these are not the decisions I wanted to make, but they are the right decisions in difficult circumstances.”
The government labelled the road schemes as “low value, unaffordable commitments,” which would have cost taxpayers £587 million in 2025.
In 2023, the Department for Transport approved the plan to build a two-mile tunnel to avoid Stonehenge on the A303, from Amesbury, Wiltshire, to Berwick Down.
The A303 is a well-known congestion hotspot, with cars often stuck in lengthy queues travelling to and from southwest England during peak holiday seasons.
‘Vindication’
Campaigners said the road upgrade plans, with the entrances to the tunnel within the world heritage site, would destroy archaeology and cause harm to the landscape around the neolithic monument which could be dotted with ancient remains.Despite the ongoing High Court battle over the proposed works, the scheme was approved in 2023 by the former Conservative government.
The Stonehenge Alliance on Monday welcomed the move to cancel the scheme, claiming the project would now cost £2.5 billion adjusted for inflation, damage the Stonehenge landscape, and would not represent value for money.
“National Highways’ misguided project was called out for what it was: low value and unaffordable. It was also highly damaging,” Mr. Adams added.
“Now that it has been scrapped, we need to move on. As soon as the budget is there, we need to ensure, as a priority, that local traffic is better managed and rail access to the south west improved,” he said.
However, Richard Clewer, leader of Wiltshire Council, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement on Tuesday he is “extremely dismayed and disappointed at the government’s decision to cancel the A303 Stonehenge tunnel project.”
He said: “It has taken many years of lobbying and working closely with partners, including National Highways, to bring this major infrastructure project to Wiltshire, and so it is a huge blow to get to the stage when construction is ready to begin, only to have this taken away from us at this late hour.
Mr. Clewer said cancelling the upgrades now wastes over £160 million that has already been spent on the project, and with no viable alternative on the table, the local community and road users in Wiltshire will continue to suffer.
Commenting on the announcement, RAC head of policy Simon Williams told The Epoch Times on Tuesday, “These budget cuts have created more questions than answers about exactly when we’ll start to see the government improve the condition of Britain’s broken roads.”
He warned the cancellation of the A27 Arundel bypass, from which Labour had promised to allocate £320 million for potholes, “doesn’t scratch the surface of the problem.”
Mr. Williams said it was not yet clear whether £8.3 billion from the cancelled northern leg of HS2 would be spent on local road maintenance over the next 11 years as promised by the previous government.
“It’s this long-term certainty of funding that local authorities so desperately need to plan long-term maintenance programmes, resurface their worst roads, and carry out preventative treatment that stops potholes forming in the first place,” he said.
