What happened previously?

N.B. National Highways was previously known as Highways England.

Autumn 2017: Highways England consulted on three options for road-building along the A27 at Arundel. These included new stretches of dual carriageway and road widening schemes that would destroy ancient woodlands and smother vulnerable and rare chalk stream habitat.
You can read Sussex Wildlife Trust's response to the 2017 consultation here (pdf).

May 2018: Highways England announced that after looking at the consultation responses, option 5A was their preferred route. You can read their preferred route announcement here (pdf).

We were appalled to hear that such an environmentally damaging decision had been made, with apparently no regard for the Government's own transport hierarchy. This short-sighted decision would result in the destruction of irreplaceable habitats and fail to bring the stated benefits of reducing congestion.

Autumn 2019: Highways England decided to carry out a further non-statutory consultation for the A27 Arundel Bypass scheme (30 August - 24 October 2019). All six options presented in the 2019 consultation included new stretches of dual carriageway that would destroy and sever precious habitats including ancient woodlands and rare chalk streams.

Sussex Wildlife Trust raised concerns that all six options:

• would significantly and permanently sever our natural environment, having an outrageous impact on wildlife and the landscape
• would increase carbon emissions and make it much harder to meet the legal target of net-zero carbon by 2050
• would harm the South Downs National Park
• involved dual carriageways rather than an option for a wide single carriageway that could minimise impacts on precious ancient woodland

February 2022: National Highways carried out a statutory consultation on the preferred grey route including on their Preliminary Environmental Information Report. Our full objection to this consultation is linked above.

March 2023: the proposed Arundel A27 bypass was put on hold until the 2025-2030 period, with the government stating environmental and design issues as the underlying reasons for this shift in timescale. Read more about this announcement in our blog.

29 July 2024: Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the government will cancel the A27 schemes.