THE Stonehenge Alliance has condemned plans to build a tunnel near Stonehenge. 

It comes after transport secretary Mark Harper green-lighted the scheme.

In the statement released on Friday, July 14 the alliance said that “UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has also condemned the scheme in its present form and has threatened placing Stonehenge on the World Heritage in Danger List, should it be allowed.”

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Stonehenge Alliance president Tom Holland said: “Today, a supposedly Conservative government plans to blow upwards of £2 billion, at a time when the country’s finances are in a shocking state, on a monstrous white elephant of a road development that will permanently disfigure Britain’s most significant and sacred prehistoric landscape.

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“The decision of Mark Harper to green-light the building of a tunnel through a stretch of the World Heritage Site that surrounds Stonehenge is as inexplicable as it is disgraceful.

"Certainly, no one can be in any doubt that the scheme will inflict ‘permanent, irreversible harm’ on a landscape that is the supreme icon of British archaeology.”

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The transport secretary green-lighted the plans again “with modifications” after his original approval of the plans on November 12, 2020 was quashed by the High Court on July 30, 2021, following further review of the proposals.