Cost of cancelled Stonehenge tunnel rises to £180m

The public cost of a cancelled road tunnel past Stonehenge has risen to almost £180m.

A request by BBC South, using the Freedom of Information Act, has revealed the bill would continue to increase as the project continued to be wound down.

The scheme to bury the A303 in a dual carriageway tunnel through the World Heritage Site on Salisbury Plain was cancelled by the Labour government days after the General Election last summer.

It had been expected to cost at least £2bn, and had taken 10 years of planning.

The scheme to tackle one of the UK's most notorious traffic bottlenecks had been held up for two years during a series of legal appeals by opponents.

National Highways said the cost at the end of October 2024 was £179.2m.

This covered preparatory work including public consultation, ground investigation and site surveys, archaeological mitigation work and responding to the legal challenges.

BBC South asked whether the international consortium of tunnel contractors would be paid compensation for abandoned work.

National Highways responded: "Whilst the Main Works Contract had been started at the time of cancellation, the contractors were in their mobilisation phase and there are no penalty payments related to stopping the contract."

It added: "National Highways is liable to pay for reasonable costs and these are being considered. A number of other contracts were also in place and any compensation claims are being considered in accordance with contract provisions."

It said that "these activities take time" and the final cost of the project's closure was not yet known.

Farmland west of Stonehenge was being purchased for construction of a bypass around the village of Winterbourne Stoke.

The government had not offered any mitigation for increased traffic on 'rat-runs' through neighbouring villages, used by drivers trying to avoid long delays on the single-carriageway A303.

Stonehenge is preparing for winter solstice celebrations on Friday, with the ancient monument open to thousands of revellers from dawn on 21 December, the shortest day of the year.

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