>The A303 scheme was originally given planning permission in 2023, but was scrapped due to financial reasons in 2024, having already had £179.2m spent on it.
Where has all that money gone? They’ve spent £180 million and literally have nothing to show for it – no construction work has been done. That’s outrageous.
In a normal world this would be a national scandal and heads would roll, but pissing obscene amounts of money down the drain on bureaucracy with no tangible results seems to be just another day in our planning system.
This has been in the works since around 2007. Why can’t we build a simple tunnel with £180m and almost two decades?
Our planning system needs to be nuked from orbit.
YOU_CANT_GILD_ME on
> having already had £179.2m spent on it.
How the fuck have they already spent £179.2m on this when nothing has been built?
OverCategory6046 on
>having already had £179.2m spent on it.
179m on something that didn’t get built? how the fuck
AllThatIHaveDone on
It’s important that we maintain our ancient and grand tradition of building absolutely fucking nothing whatsoever. It’s what our henge-building ancestors would have wanted.
Chemistry-Deep on
I wonder if the Neolithic people had this much trouble getting planning consent to build Stonehenge in the first place?
PerLin107 on
Heads should roll for this. It is a national scandal.names shoud be named. We sre not talking about hundreds of thousands but hundreds of MILLIONS
Electrical_Crazy_254 on
A lot of money was spent laying power and comms lines along the A360 in preparation for the work to start (which, of course, was cancelled as soon as Labour got in).
Any-Republic-4269 on
The thing presumably needed some design and engineering before and during the planning process. It runs through a World Heritage Site and arguably one of the world’s most famous monuments. Was actually going to destroy part of said site – so ‘consultants’ isn’t really the answer. It’s been hugely complex and controversial. Our planning system is slow and dysfunctional but I don’t think, for once, ‘planners’ and ‘consultants’ are the reason something’s not been built at great expense here.
ZeroEffectDude on
i heard they were gonna turn stonehenge into a helipad
cartesian5th on
Once again taxpayers bled dry in return for absolutely fuck all. Joke of a country
Worried-Penalty8744 on
Hope no one in that area ever makes a _single_ complaint again about traffic on the A303 or local roads as a result of this
Middle_Inside9346 on
New plan is to demolish stone henge and build flats.
TrickMathematician31 on
The tunnel was going to cost at least £2 billion.
Hardly a priority project either.
TeddyMMR on
And no one will be held accountable for wasting our money
DrPeroxide on
The project wasn’t exactly popular in the first place, having been pushed forward by the Tory’s in spite of public backlash and the many issues raised. Personally I’m glad to hear it’s been put to bed, but it doesn’t make the waste of money sting any less.
Ok-Western3626 on
While the sum wasted is eye-watering, it would have cost 10 times that to build the thing, all to shorten the peak time queue by 2 miles at that point, and relocate the bottleneck to the next single carriageway section of the A303. Surely there are better ways to spend £1.5 billion.
Lplus on
If you insist on consulting everybody, most of whom have fanatical (usually environmental) reasons for saying no, what do you expect?
katie-kaboom on
Bit of a misleading headline, isn’t it? Planning permission wasn’t revoked from an active building site. The project has been mothballed for two years, after £179 million was spent in the initial planning stages and then it was decided it was too expensive. This is just cleaning up the mess.
House_Of_Thoth on
And just imagine – they could have simply took the easy option of extending the road around and away from Stonehenge. But no… let’s build a stupid tunnel underneath an ancient monument because there’s clearly no room for a road in the hundreds of surrounding acres of flat, empty land
This ridiculous story just gets more and more ridiculous. And people wonder why politicians are hated
_Monsterguy_ on
HS2 was announced in 2009, it was to be 330miles of high speed rail connecting London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds/Sheffield.
Some time around 2036 or maybe 2039, we’ll get 140miles (225km) of HS2.
China has built 48,000km of high-speed rail since 2009.
balanced_view on
Incredible how much people can spunk away on planning something like this. What a bloody stitch-up.
RoyalJacko on
The A303 Stonehenge tunnel project has been in some form of planning for over 30 years; they have spent over £179.2 million, and it’s not even going ahead. How can our country go on like this? Our planning system is broken, and this is not a one-off instance either.
TheZYX on
*’In light of the project’s “exceptional circumstances”, which it said includes “a substantial change in the scheme’s deliverability” since the DCO was approved and that it “no longer aligns with current strategic policy objectives”* … meaning ‘we need the money elsewhere lads’
i_anglepoise on
This tweet from Tom Gara lives rent free in my head whenever Stonehenge is mentioned:
“Randomly on this subject, my (Egyptian) wife had never heard of Stonehenge when I mentioned it recently, so I showed her photos of it, assuming she’d recognize the look but not the name etc, and she was just like, this is pathetic, your ancestors were small and weak”.
It is still pathetic.
SidneySmut on
The key priority for “build baby build” UK is that we continue not to build a necessary, strategic highway improvements because preserving views of 3000yo stone circle half a mile away are far more important. It’s vital that our national priorities focus on looking backwards at all times. Oh yeah, I almost forgot
Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge where a man is a man
And the children dance to the pipes of pan
Karen_Is_ASlur on
What’s the argument against building the tunnel – is it a conservation thing, protecting other archaeological sites in the area?
26 Comments
>The A303 scheme was originally given planning permission in 2023, but was scrapped due to financial reasons in 2024, having already had £179.2m spent on it.
Where has all that money gone? They’ve spent £180 million and literally have nothing to show for it – no construction work has been done. That’s outrageous.
In a normal world this would be a national scandal and heads would roll, but pissing obscene amounts of money down the drain on bureaucracy with no tangible results seems to be just another day in our planning system.
This has been in the works since around 2007. Why can’t we build a simple tunnel with £180m and almost two decades?
Our planning system needs to be nuked from orbit.
> having already had £179.2m spent on it.
How the fuck have they already spent £179.2m on this when nothing has been built?
>having already had £179.2m spent on it.
179m on something that didn’t get built? how the fuck
It’s important that we maintain our ancient and grand tradition of building absolutely fucking nothing whatsoever. It’s what our henge-building ancestors would have wanted.
I wonder if the Neolithic people had this much trouble getting planning consent to build Stonehenge in the first place?
Heads should roll for this. It is a national scandal.names shoud be named. We sre not talking about hundreds of thousands but hundreds of MILLIONS
A lot of money was spent laying power and comms lines along the A360 in preparation for the work to start (which, of course, was cancelled as soon as Labour got in).
The thing presumably needed some design and engineering before and during the planning process. It runs through a World Heritage Site and arguably one of the world’s most famous monuments. Was actually going to destroy part of said site – so ‘consultants’ isn’t really the answer. It’s been hugely complex and controversial. Our planning system is slow and dysfunctional but I don’t think, for once, ‘planners’ and ‘consultants’ are the reason something’s not been built at great expense here.
i heard they were gonna turn stonehenge into a helipad
Once again taxpayers bled dry in return for absolutely fuck all. Joke of a country
Hope no one in that area ever makes a _single_ complaint again about traffic on the A303 or local roads as a result of this
New plan is to demolish stone henge and build flats.
The tunnel was going to cost at least £2 billion.
Hardly a priority project either.
And no one will be held accountable for wasting our money
The project wasn’t exactly popular in the first place, having been pushed forward by the Tory’s in spite of public backlash and the many issues raised. Personally I’m glad to hear it’s been put to bed, but it doesn’t make the waste of money sting any less.
While the sum wasted is eye-watering, it would have cost 10 times that to build the thing, all to shorten the peak time queue by 2 miles at that point, and relocate the bottleneck to the next single carriageway section of the A303. Surely there are better ways to spend £1.5 billion.
If you insist on consulting everybody, most of whom have fanatical (usually environmental) reasons for saying no, what do you expect?
Bit of a misleading headline, isn’t it? Planning permission wasn’t revoked from an active building site. The project has been mothballed for two years, after £179 million was spent in the initial planning stages and then it was decided it was too expensive. This is just cleaning up the mess.
And just imagine – they could have simply took the easy option of extending the road around and away from Stonehenge. But no… let’s build a stupid tunnel underneath an ancient monument because there’s clearly no room for a road in the hundreds of surrounding acres of flat, empty land
This ridiculous story just gets more and more ridiculous. And people wonder why politicians are hated
HS2 was announced in 2009, it was to be 330miles of high speed rail connecting London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds/Sheffield.
Some time around 2036 or maybe 2039, we’ll get 140miles (225km) of HS2.
China has built 48,000km of high-speed rail since 2009.
Incredible how much people can spunk away on planning something like this. What a bloody stitch-up.
The A303 Stonehenge tunnel project has been in some form of planning for over 30 years; they have spent over £179.2 million, and it’s not even going ahead. How can our country go on like this? Our planning system is broken, and this is not a one-off instance either.
*’In light of the project’s “exceptional circumstances”, which it said includes “a substantial change in the scheme’s deliverability” since the DCO was approved and that it “no longer aligns with current strategic policy objectives”* … meaning ‘we need the money elsewhere lads’
This tweet from Tom Gara lives rent free in my head whenever Stonehenge is mentioned:
“Randomly on this subject, my (Egyptian) wife had never heard of Stonehenge when I mentioned it recently, so I showed her photos of it, assuming she’d recognize the look but not the name etc, and she was just like, this is pathetic, your ancestors were small and weak”.
It is still pathetic.
The key priority for “build baby build” UK is that we continue not to build a necessary, strategic highway improvements because preserving views of 3000yo stone circle half a mile away are far more important. It’s vital that our national priorities focus on looking backwards at all times. Oh yeah, I almost forgot
Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge where a man is a man
And the children dance to the pipes of pan
What’s the argument against building the tunnel – is it a conservation thing, protecting other archaeological sites in the area?