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Thursday 22 March 2018

A303 update from Highways England.


Another day another meeting – about A303 matters, or at least it seems like it! On Tuesday evening, STAG attended the second of the new Highways England Forums which will take place by-monthly from now until time immemorial or 2025!!!
Highways England are anxious that we should be kept up to speed with the on-going project and hope that most people will have found the time to visit one of their consulations explaining where we are and what could be done. They would like your input in the “what could be done” bit and hope that as many of us will complete the response form with the help of the Public Consultation Booklet which can be collected at any of the remaining Consultations or most health centres and libraries in the area.
The booklet is easy to understand and is broken up into 3 sections: western section, central section, and eastern section. The response form gives you the chance to put your views on the proposals and the chance even to select the appearance of the tunnel entrances, portals, where green bridges might be best put, cycle tracks and by-ways, details of the new Longbarrow roundabouts, Countess roundabout and flyover and lots of other information that will affect us all in due course. Here’s the scary bit….Using the Consultation Booklet, the response form took me about 6 days to complete on-line, ducking in and out when I had the time, using the “save and come back later button”. Also, we have a little more time to complete our responses because of the recent bad weather….I received this e-mail yesterday:

Dear Stonehenge Traffic Action Group
We wrote to you at the beginning of February about the launch of our formal public consultation on the proposals to upgrade the A303 past Stonehenge. The purpose of this email is to inform you that because we needed to cancel some of our consultation events due to the severe weather, we have decided to extend the formal consultation period until Monday 23 April 2018. This will allow time for rescheduled events in both Mere and Salisbury, and allow sufficient time for people to respond following these. Feedback from this consultation is important in helping us shape the scheme further; you can read more information at:
http://roads.highways.gov.uk/projects/a303-stonehenge-amesbury-and-berwick-down/ This includes details of the remaining public consultation events and the deposit locations where you can access printed copies of our consultation materials. If you have any questions you can phone us on 0300 123 5000 or email us at A303stonehenge@highwaysengland.co.uk

And so, back to our meeting on Tuesday evening….this was very much an update from the one back in February, because the project is progressing so fast now. There are changes almost hourly and Highways England are anxious that we are kept up to speed….tho’ they know they can’t please all of the people all of the time, so there needs to be a compromise. They are doing their best in very difficult circumstances and terrain, not to mention archaeology and environment, which is all taken into account and can be read in the booklet. So! Please please please get involved and have your say, because it will be too late to complain when they submit the DCO – Development Consent Order to the planning inspectorate in the autumn of this year!!
You can continue to get updates locally at: 
or read the blog at: staga303.blogspot.co.uk
Best wishes
The STAG Team!

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