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