The United Kingdom has just shelved a project that has been on the table for 20 years: build a road near Stonehenge connect once and for all the jammed London with the southwest of the country. And along the way it has won a ‘golden’ contract that had been awarded to the Spanish company FCC. The figure? 2,000 million euros that remain on the way and a London connection that will continue to be gibberish.
Let’s go in parts. Stonehenge is one of the most visited monuments. It is estimated that every year they come 1.5 million tourists to participate in the mystery of this set of monolithic rocks that someone placed it there more than 5,000 years ago. Everything has been theorized and we have two things clear: it is unlikely that one day we will know the motivation behind the workbut we know that the acoustics were impressive.
Less imposing is the A303, the road next to it and which is a real nightmare. London is one of the most congested cities in the world. With a population of nine million, 14 in the metropolitan area, and thousands who go to work daily, that connection with the southwest has become one of the entrance arteries to the city.
The tunnel is going to cost how much?
The problem? Although it is a highway, in the section that passes through Stonehenge it becomes a two-way road. This implies brutal congestion, and that is why in 1995 work began on a solution. The Highway Agency has explored alternative routes, but in the end the easiest thing was to bury the road.
Easy, but not cheap: four kilometers long for a tunnel with a cost My dear of 183 million pounds. Then it doubled up to 470 million, 540 million and up to 1.7 billion pounds that they estimated in 2020. It was a stratospheric increase, but Highways England was clear that it was the only way. In fact, They developed a firm project and, in 2022, was awarded to the Spanish FCC Construction.
Next to the Italian Webuild and the Austrian BeMo Tunnelling, would give shape to that tunnel whose cost had promoted up to 2 billion pounds. But in the end it was not even the UNESCO (concerned because the tunnels will pass through a World Heritage site) nor the environmentalists who have managed to stop the project. It was the Labor Party.
In 2024, the Conservatives were out of power, Labor came in and they found themselves a £22bn hole. Already last year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves stated that there would be cuts and that if there were projects they couldn’t afford, they wouldn’t do them. He also commented that all transport projects exceeding £1 billion would be subject to a “comprehensive review”.
And, as a result of that situation, and after months on the tightrope, a few days ago communicated that The British government had definitively canceled the project of the new Stonehenge road. Apart from the tunnel, there was a viaduct, new intersections between the A303 and local roads and green bridges for pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles, but for Reeves and his government, the work was “unaffordable” in the “challenging legacy financial landscape”.
The legal battle begins
The problem is that something that has been around for 20 years and that was awarded to three companies a year ago has not been frozen in time.
At this point, the different companies and Highways England itself had already invested around £180 million in the development, including land assessment, archaeological and heritage preservation studies, as well as public consultations.
Although the Government has shelved the A303 Stonehenge project, the problem of which is still there, there is still a way to go for the parties involved. Now the FCC legal fight begins, which, as we read in Expansionhad already completed all the design work for the highway.
And it is expected that both the Spanish company and Webuild and BeMo will receive compensation for this cancellation, although the amount has yet to be determined.
Images | National Highways
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