Remember my post on 30th November titled "Aggressive Begging"....just to update you...money taken from those who don't even know where Stonehenge WHS is!!!
New post on The Heritage
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A campaign to dual the A303 west of Stonehenge. Since the closure of the A344 past Stonehenge, traffic has increased on the A303, causing rat running through Shrewton and other local villages. This has endangered the lives of local people as drivers follow sat navs trying to avoid queues on the A303. The A303 needs to be dualled past Stonehenge and a by-pass for Winterbourne Stoke is much needed.
Remember my post on 30th November titled "Aggressive Begging"....just to update you...money taken from those who don't even know where Stonehenge WHS is!!!
New post on The Heritage
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We reveal the facts behind some of the most common myths and misconceptions about the A303 Stonehenge scheme.
https://highwaysengland.co.uk/our-work/a303-stonehenge/fact-checker/
Myth #1 - The tunnel is going under Stonehenge One of the most common myths is that the tunnel will be going under Stonehenge. This is just not true. It will in fact be further away than the current road. More than 200 metres to the south of Stonehenge – the length of two football pitches - and up to 40 metres underground.
As we explained in #1 the tunnel isn’t actually that close to Stonehenge itself – and the way we plan to dig it will prevent harm. A sophisticated tunnelling machine, similar to the type used in major infrastructure projects all over the world, will be specially designed for the ground conditions within the World Heritage Site.
Myth #4 - We'll lose the free view of Stonehenge
If you're a driver, this is true. But it’s not the whole story.
By removing the old A303, walkers, cyclists and horse riders will be able to see Stonehenge whenever they like using a new dedicated public right of way being created along the route of the current road. Removing the sight and sound of the noisy, busy road from most of the World Heritage Site will return the Stonehenge landscape to something like its original setting, allowing people to enjoy the ancient stones and explore and understand many other fascinating prehistoric monuments in the surrounding landscape.
Myth #5 - The traffic is caused by people slowing down to look at the stones (just put a fence up instead)
People slowing to look at the stones is only a small part of the problem. The main reason for ongoing congestion is in fact that the existing road simply can’t cope with the volume of traffic - regularly carrying twice it was designed for.
A fence wouldn’t solve this and would damage those things that make the World Heritage Site special - creating a barrier, something we are trying to remove by placing the A303 in a 2-mile tunnel.
Press release
The transformational A303 Stonehenge (Amesbury to Berwick Down) scheme was last month given the green light by the Secretary of State for Transport, and as well as the wider economic benefits, the project could be just the job in terms of providing opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises locally, regionally and further afield.
According to an independent economic assessment commissioned by local authorities and the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership, and validated by the Department for Transport, improving the A303 corridor will help to create 21,000 jobs and deliver a £39 billion boost in the long term.
And Highways England is today (9 December) outlining details of how small and medium-sized businesses can get involved in the A303 Stonehenge scheme at Business West’s virtual Swindon & Wiltshire Business and Economy Meeting.
David Bullock, Highways England Project Manager for the A303 Stonehenge scheme, said:
"The scheme has numerous benefits, not only in improving journey reliability and enhancing the World Heritage Site landscape, but also in unlocking economic growth in the South West"
"The scheme is not just limited to larger, national and international companies, and we’re keen for local and regional businesses to get the chance to work with the project"
"With our archaeology specialists and preliminary works contractors expected to start on site in late spring next year, there’s going to be some opportunities with those companies within the next six months or so. But there will be greater potential when our main contractor is appointed later in 2021, and we’d urge businesses to get in touch now, so we can start to help them prepare"
In the meantime, Highways England is working closely with the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership, Business West and the Federation of Small Businesses, and has partnered nationally with the Supply Chain Sustainability School to provide free online training.
This helps smaller companies to upskill and place them in a better position to tender for work on larger infrastructure projects, such as the A303 Stonehenge upgrade.
Through its procurement process, the company, responsible for England’s major A roads and motorways, appoints main contractors who in turn require their own supply chain, which provides opportunities for sub-contractors and sub-consultants to bid for work and become part of the extended supply chain.
The A303 Stonehenge project team has recently awarded contracts to Osborne Ltd for the preliminary works and Wessex Archaeology for the archaeological excavation work, and in the next six months, the types of services and people required will include plant, fencing, track matting, catering, cleaning, accommodation and hospitality.
Osborne project director Chris Hudson said:
"Osborne has significant experience working collaboratively with Highways England and local stakeholders on a wide variety of challenging projects. Knowing the benefits such projects can bring, we engage with local communities, keeping them informed as well as supporting local businesses and initiatives where possible".
Highways England will also be hosting a Meet The Buyer event early in the new year, and this will help to outline the training available via the Supply Chain Sustainability School, including topics such as Business Ethics, Waste Resource, Sustainable Procurement and Equality Diversion Inclusion.
In the meantime, any companies interested in working on the A303 Stonehenge project are asked to register their details. Information will then be passed to the relevant contractors.
Paddy Bradley, Swindon and Wiltshire LEP Chief Executive, said:
"These businesses are at the core of our economy and their engagement with the supply chain activity associated with this major infrastructure project is exactly what they need"
We want small businesses in our area to gain these contracts as strong and resilient enterprises create employment and security for families in our area.
Ruth Lambert, Development Manager for the Federation of Small Businesses in Wiltshire, said
"This initiative to raise awareness of opportunities from the A303 scheme is a great idea and we will certainly be doing our bit to spread the word
We’d encourage small business owners across the county to think about how they might be able to get involved and benefit from the economic opportunities the project offers for our area"
For more details and updates on the A303 Stonehenge scheme, people can log on to the scheme website, and for any further queries, companies can email info@a303stonehenge.co.uk.
https://highwaysengland.co.uk/our-work/a303-stonehenge/supply-chain/
Wouldn't it be nice if https://stonehengealliance.org.uk/ and their archaeologists could agree to working with Highways archaeologists in a mutually co-operative manner...but NO! Stonehenge Alliance have many times made it clear that.....
"THEY HAVE NO COMMON GROUND"
I like the bit where Tom Holland President of https://stonehengealliance.org.uk/ says "To have won the arguments based on reason and evidence, and then to have them overruled on a ministerial whim, shows just how broken the roads approval process is"
Just read more of this blog to find out about his comment "reason and evidence" which is more like scaremongering, fabrication, conjecture presented as fact, deliberate misinformation and proselytism (dictionary at the ready here folks) 😂 None of their arguments ever held water....remember my colander in the posting titled "Dan Snow...yes that...."dated 18/3/2015
https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/the-stonehenge-road-decision-good-news-at-last/
The Journal has been maintained since March 2005 to promote awareness and the conservation of the incomparable but often-threatened prehistoric sites of Britain, Ireland and beyond.
THE STONEHENGE ALLIANCE [1]
Legal action launched on Stonehenge road decision
EMBARGOED: 00:01 hrs, Monday, 30 November, 2020
Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site [2], a new organization set up by The Stonehenge Alliance, has instructed counsel and Leigh Day to investigate the lawfulness of the Secretary of State’s decision [3] to approve the A303 Stonehenge dual carriageway. A letter is being sent today (Friday 27th) to the Department for Transport outlining its concerns.
To make this possible, campaigners are launching an appeal on Crowd Justice [4] to raise £50,000 to cover the initial costs of the legal action, which will go live at 6am on Monday.
The decision by Grant Shapps to approve the road on 12 November, despite a recommendation by the Examination Panel that it be refused [5], sent shock waves around the world.
Tom Holland, Stonehenge Alliance President, expressed his backing for the legal action:
“I fully back the move to test whether Grants Shapps acted legally in approving this highly wasteful and destructive road scheme. The Government has ignored advice from both UNESCO [6] and the independent panel who presided over a six-month examination. To have won the arguments based on reason and evidence, and then to have them overruled on a ministerial whim, shows just how broken the roads approval process is.
“I urge everyone who cares about the Stonehenge World Heritage Site to support this legal action. There is still a chance to stop the bulldozers moving in and vandalising our most precious and iconic prehistoric landscape.
Word to the wise Stonehenge Alliance....
Stop flogging a dead horse!
And just for the record S A....We do also care about the Stonehenge World Heritage Site!!
So! if that statement is anything to go by, surely this stuff from Prof Mike Parker Pearson is also "smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand statistics, conjecture presented as fear, and finally....deliberate use of misleading statements!"
They have joined battle this week over Stonehenge and its protected landscape after plans for a two-mile road tunnel through the world heritage site were approved by Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, despite planning officials recommending that the project be stopped because it would cause “permanent irreversible harm”.
An alliance of academics and historians is seeking legal advice on whether they can apply for a judicial review. They have six weeks in which to challenge the decision in the High Court.
In the meantime a group of 17 academics wrote to The Times calling for the length of the tunnel to be doubled, so that it would clear the world heritage site and prevent the estimated destruction of up to half a million artefacts in the densest concentration of neolithic burial mounds anywhere in Britain.
Specially selected sample areas of the construction sites will be excavated and catalogued by archaeologists before tunnelling starts but opponents say the entire site must be excavated first if the tunnel goes ahead.
Mike Pitts, a commercial archaeologist who sits with 13 archaeologists on the A303 scientific committee, created by Highways England to advise on the archaeological aspects of the scheme, said that the claims of 500,000 artefacts being destroyed were “scaremongering”.
“It might be right to say hundreds of thousands of artefacts will be lost but what is not being said is there is not a lot of information those artefacts would tell us that is new,” he said.
Mr Pitts said the vast majority of the destroyed artefacts would be pieces of worked flint in the topsoil, known as “plough soil”, which can indicate whether people were in a landscape and the broad time when they were present. “We know people were present in the landscape. It would hardly be a great revelation that people in the Bronze Age or the Stone Age were at Stonehenge walking across the fields. There has already been extensive sampling of this construction site anyway,” he said. The real discoveries were to be made by excavating deeper, he added.
Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeology professor at University College London and an expert on Stonehenge, where he and his team have discovered a new henge and a settlement where Stonehenge’s builders may have lived, was one of the lead authors of the letter to The Times. Mr Parker Pearson, who also sits on the A303 scientific committee, said Mr Pitts was “utterly wrong” about the importance of flint artefacts in the plough soil and said they accounted for 90 per cent of all prehistoric evidence in the landscape. He and his supporters, who include seven of the 13 committee members, say that if the tunnel must be built all the plough soil at construction sites should be sieved for artefacts and catalogued. “What we have discovered is that for 100 flints only two are what we call diagnostic — an arrowhead or a tool used for cleaning hides — and if you only sieve 10 per cent of the plough soil you are not going to find enough of the diagnostics to tell you about the date and activities that the tools derive from,” he said.
The demand for 100 per cent sieving was described as “ludicrous” by Mr Pitts, who said it would take too long and cost too much to be feasible. Mr Parker Pearson said the argument that the construction area was too large to 100 per cent sieve was like “saying it’s so big we won’t go to the normal high standards employed in the world heritage site.
So! here it is from the horses mouth....oops! I of course mean....
The Planning Inspectorate
"The Secretary of State decision letter" PDF 737". https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-content/ipc/uploads/projects/TR010025/TR010025-002180-STON%20-%20Secretary%20of%20State%20Decision%20Letter.pdf
To save you wading through the whole document and to cut through all the gobble de gook.....you need to read from para 30 which is the bit the naysayers have latched on to and gone no further. However, if you also read para's 33, 34, and 35 it puts the prophets of doom's opinions and negativity regarding the decision, into perspective:
33. It is the ExA’s opinion that when assessed in accordance with NPSNN, the Development’s effects on the OUV of the WHS, and the significance of heritage assets through development within their settings taken as a whole would lead to substantial harm [ER 5.7.333]. However, the Secretary of State notes the ExA also accepts that its conclusions in relation to cultural heritage, landscape and visual impact issues and the other harms identified, are ultimately matters of planning judgment on which there have been differing and informed opinions and evidence submitted to the examination [ER 7.5.26]. The Secretary of State notes the ExA’s view on the level of harm being substantial is not supported by the positions of the Applicant, Wiltshire Council, the National Trust, the English Heritage Trust, DCMS and Historic England. These stakeholders place greater weight on the benefits to the WHS from the removal of the existing A303 road compared to any consequential harmful effects elsewhere in the WHS. Indeed, the indications are that they consider there would or could be scope for a net benefit overall to the WHS [ER 5.7.54, ER 5.7.55, ER 5.7.62, ER 5.7.70, ER 5.7.72 and ER 5.7.83].
34. The Secretary of State notes the differing positions of the ExA and Historic England, who has a duty under the provisions of the National Heritage Act 1983 (as amended) to secure the preservation and enhancement of the historic environment. He agrees with the ExA that there will be harm on spatial, visual relations and settings that weighs against the Development. However, he notes that there is no suggestion from Historic England that the level of harm would be substantial. Ultimately, the Secretary of State prefers Historic England’s view on this matter for the reasons given [ER 5.7.62 – 5.7.69] and considers it is appropriate to give weight to its judgment as the Government’s statutory advisor on the historic environment, including world heritage. The Secretary of State is satisfied therefore that the harm on spatial, visual relations and settings is less than substantial and should be weighed against the public benefits of the Development in the planning balance.
35. Whilst also acknowledging the adverse impacts of the Development, the Secretary of State notes that Historic England’s concluding submission [Examination Library document AS-111] states that it has supported the aspirations of the Development from the outset and that putting much of the existing A303 surface road into a tunnel would allow archaeological features within the WHS, currently separated by the A303 road, to be appreciated as part of a reunited landscape, and would facilitate enhanced public access to this internationally important site [ER 5.7.62] and that overall it broadly concurs with the Applicant’s Heritage Impact Assessment [ER 5.7.66]. Furthermore, it is also noted from Historic England’s concluding submission that it considers the Development proposes a significant reduction in the sight and sound of traffic in the part of the WHS where it will most improve the experience of the Stonehenge monument itself, and enhancements to the experience of the solstitial alignments [ER 5.12.32]. It considers that, alongside enhanced public access, these are all significant benefits for the historic environment.
36. The Secretary of State also notes from Historic England’s concluding submission made during the examination [Examination library document AS-111] that its objective through the course of the examination was to ensure that the historic environment is fully and properly taken into account in the determination of the application and, if consented, that appropriate safeguards be built into the Development across the dDCO, OEMP and the Detailed Archaeological Mitigation Strategy (“DAMS”) [ER 5.7.63]. Whilst it is also noted that Historic England identified during the examination a number of concerns where further information, detail, clarity or amendments were needed, particularly around how the impacts of the Development would be mitigated, their concluding submission states that its concerns have been broadly addressed. Historic England believe that the dDCO, OEMP and DAMS set out a process to ensure that heritage advice and considerations can play an appropriate and important role in the construction, operation and maintenance of the Development. As a consequence of the incorporation of the Design Vision, Commitments and Principles in the OEMP, together with arrangements for consultation and engagement with Historic England, it considers sufficient safeguards have been built in for the detailed design stage and there are now sufficient provisions for the protection of the historic environment in the dDCO. It is Historic England’s view that the DAMS is underpinned by a series of scheme specific research questions which will ensure that an understanding of the OUV of the WHS and the significance of the historic environment overall will guide decision making and maximise opportunities to further understand this exceptional landscape. It considers the DAMS will also ensure that the archaeological mitigation under the Site Specific Written Schemes of Investigation (“SSWSIs”) will be supported by the use of innovative methods 10 and technologies and the implementation of an iterative and intelligent strategy, which will enable it to make a unique contribution to international research agendas.
37. Given the amendments and assurances requested and received during the course of the examination and the safeguards that are now built into the DCO overall, Historic England states in the concluding submission that it is confident of the Development’s potential to deliver benefits for the historic environment.
38. The Secretary of State also notes that Historic England would continue to advise the Applicant on the detail of the design and delivery of the Development through its statutory role and its roles as a member of Heritage Monitoring and Advisory Group and of the Stakeholder Design Consultation Group. The ExA agrees with Historic England’s view that this would also help minimise impact on the OUV, and delivery of the potential benefits for the historic environment [ER 5.7.69].
40. Similarly, the Secretary of State also notes the National Trust’s support for the Development and view that, if well designed and delivered with the utmost care for the surrounding archaeology and chalk grassland landscape, the Development could provide an overall benefit to the WHS. It also considers the Development could help to reunite the landscape providing improvements to monument setting, tranquility and access for both people and wildlife.
43. The Secretary of State has also carefully considered the ExA’s concerns and the respective counter arguments and positions of other Interested Parties, including ICOMOSUK, WHSCU, the Stonehenge Alliance, the COA and the CBA in relation to the effects of elements of the Development on the OUV of the WHS and on the cultural heritage and the historic environment of the wider area raised during the examination. The Secretary of State notes in particular the concerns raised by some Interested Parties and the ExA in respect of the adverse impact arising from western tunnel approach cutting and portal, the proposed Longbarrow Junction and, to a lesser extent, the eastern approach and portal [ER 5.7.207]. He accepts there will be adverse impacts from those parts of the Development. However, on balance and when considering the views of Historic England and also Wiltshire Council, he is satisfied that any harm caused to the WHS when considered as a whole would be less than substantial and therefore the adverse impacts of the Development should be balanced against its public benefits.
57. The sensitivity of the WHS environment to people’s beliefs and their rights to exercise those beliefs is recognized. The broader WHS landscape’s religious and spiritual significance is also understood and appreciated. Furthermore, the Secretary of State notes that no evidence was presented to suggest that the Development would prevent or limit anyone from exercising these rights [ER 5.11.66]. The ExA considers the Applicant has fully addressed this issue and is satisfied that the Development would accord with the NPSNN [ER 7.2.46]. The Secretary of State agrees. He also agrees that article 16 of the dDCO, as revised during the examination, would address the concerns of the Druid Orders in respect 16 to the treatment of human remains [ER 7.2.47]
113. Accordingly, the Secretary of State has decided to grant the application for development consent.
It goes on to paragraph 115 for you all to read and enjoy!
And so....we come back to our curate's egg...A "curate's egg" is something described as partly bad and partly good. In its original usage, it referred to something that is obviously and entirely bad, but is described out of politeness as nonetheless having good features that redeem it. Wikipedia