St John's Academy

The school campus is located on the edge of the built-up boundary of Marlborough. The existing school buildings, notably the existing Sports Hall and Sixth Form building, form a backdrop to the proposed new building and ensure that its impact on the wider landscape setting, including the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), is minimised.

Views of the building are limited, including most notably from existing school driveway to the south west. Given the importance of this consideration, a full Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment (LVIA) will be prepared in support of the application to consider this issue.

The proposed planting around the building includes trees on the south western elevation of the new building to help assimilate it into the existing landscape.

Given the proximity of the site to the Marlborough Tunnels, which are known to be an important habitat for bats, surveys are being carried out to assess the impact of the proposed building and other infrastructure on these bats, including their flight routes andpatterns. A full Ecological Report will be submitted with the application but at this stage, the studies have confirmed that the siting of the proposed building and other structures does not have any harmful impact.