Highways England has won the legal right to carry out surveys on farmland around Stonehenge, in a ruling that could be helpful for future infrastructure projects.
The organisation is currently scoping plans to divert the A303 road into a tunnel under the monument and needs to dig boreholes in the area as part of its engineering survey.
Meanwhile, the overall plan is still under consideration by the government.
The ruling is the result of a legal challenge brought by John Sawkill, a farmer who owns and farms arable land around the monument. While he has allowed surveyors onto his land before, he became concerned that by digging boreholes and discharging water onto his land, the surveyors would damage his crops.
When negotiations between Highways England and Sawkill failed, Highways England applied to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for permission to carry out the surveys. Sawkill, though his lawyers, said he would challenge the authorisation via judicial review, an action that has led to today’s judgment.
Sawkill’s lawyers made two specific and technical challenges. The first was that Highways England shouldn’t be allowed to use section 172 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 to gain access to his land. The second is that even if surveying is allowed on the land, the dumping of water is not.
In a ruling handed down today High Court Planning judge Mr Justice Dove dismissed both arguments.
He ruled that the “section 172 power” could “coexist” with “other overlapping or alternative powers”, so could be used in this case.
Also he said that he was “satisfied” that discharge of water is part and parcel of the pumping tests to be undertaken on the claimant’s land and properly falls within the definition of a survey, as authorised by section 172 of the 2016 Act”.
This ruling could be of use for future infrastructure projects, according to Angus Walker, a partner at BDB Pitmans.
“Highways England saw off a challenge to its Stonehenge tunnel project that it was using the wrong process to force landowners to allow their land to be surveyed, with the judge deciding they could do so,” he said.
“This will simplify the early stages for all infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, the decision on the tunnel project, due yesterday, has been delayed along with all other recent decisions.”
John Philip Sawkill v Highways England Company Limited and The National Trust
Administrative Court (Dove J) 3 April 2020
Tim Mould QC (instructed by Hewitsons LLP) for the claimant
Timothy Corner QC and Andrew Byass (instructed by Pinsent Masons LLP) for the defendant
