Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of implications for his policies of the Unesco World Heritage Committee’s concerns that proposed changes to the A303 near Stonehenge would impact adversely on the Stonehenge landscape because the tunnel is too short.

The Secretary of State’s decision to approve the A303 (Amesbury to Berwick Down) Development Consent Order (“A303 Stonehenge”) road scheme promoted by Highways England was issued on 12 November 2020. The reasons for his decision, including consideration of its impacts on the World Heritage Site, are set out in the decision letter which, along with the other decision documents, is available on the National Infrastructure Planning website. The decision is currently subject to a claim for judicial review and, therefore, no further comment can be made on either the decision or the live litigation case.