THROUGH your pages, I wish to put forward my objections to the planning applications by English Heritage for increased car/ light utility vehicle/coach parking at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre.

My primary objection is, under the pre-conditions of the planning permission for the new visitor centre and its’ infrastructure, this was supposed to be an “unobtrusive” facility.

This has not been the case, and it has become a blot on the landscape. The concept outlined by English Heritage was that visitors would be introduced, via an interactive presentation to ‘The Stonehenge Experience’ and thus to the monument itself, evidently in a seamless way.

This, self evidently, English Heritage have failed to do, by siting the Visitor Centre too far away from the monument itself (more than a mile) and providing a transportation system that, over the year the Visitor Centre has been open, has been shown to be totally inefficient, to the point where alternative transit arrangements have become the norm, with, as of today, all of the primary transportation (land trains) being out of action.

Any expansion of the existing parking will only exacerbate an already over-stretched resource which has demonstrated currently that it is barely able to cope with the million-plus visitors it currently receives per annum. In addition, English Heritage has previously stated in its management plan that the land proposed for these two expansions would not be used.

They claim it is necessary to use land earmarked for the car park extension as a “temporary overflow car park,” “to cope with the additional capacity.”

The inevitable increase in vehicle movements that such expansions would bring about, runs counter to the stated aims of the World Heritage Sites Committee.

Inevitably, approval of these aforementioned proposals would have an increasingly detrimental effect on the traffic flows in surrounding communities, and are not going to be improved until the A303 in the Stonehenge section is dualled – but this is likely to be at least five years in the future.

David Hassett

Shrewton Resident, and member of STAG (Stonehenge Traffic Action Group)