PLANS for the new St John's School in Marlborough will remain unchanged despite an 11th hour bid to get buildings moved further away from homes.

Head teacher Patrick Hazlewood and the team of consultants behind the development were grim faced after town councillors rejected their plans on Monday.

The council made its decision at the end of a special meeting at which residents of Ducks Meadow protested that the school was being built too close to their homes.

The Ducks Meadow families asked for the plans to be modified and buildings moved further away.

St John's had tried to meet objections by moving the school back so that buildings would be ten metres from garden boundaries in Ducks Meadow.

Following this week's meeting Dr Hazlewood told the Gazette it was too late for the school to make further modifications to the plans as they have been submitted to Kennet District Council.

He said he and the design team were disappointed that the town councillors had taken a narrow local view instead of looking at how the school would benefit the wider community.

"We have spent over £1 million at this stage and we cannot hold this project back," he said.

The head teacher stressed there had been "a whole range of consultations both formally and informally" at which the town council could have expressed its view before the planning application was made.

He said: "It is only at this stage that they have tried to block this project."

Town councillors met to ratify the decision of its planning committee a fortnight earlier to object to the design and siting of the new school buildings.

Councillors made it clear that while they supported the principle of a new single site school at Orchard Road to replace the two present buildings, they could not support the detail of the proposal.

The councillors' decision was welcomed by Ducks Meadow residents who are incensed that school buildings could end up just 33 metres from their windows.

Deborah Findlay's home in Ducks Meadow would be the nearest to the new building.

At present the nearest school buildings are single-storey mobile classrooms 36 metres away. She said her young son was mortified that the school would overlook his home.

Another resident Richard Prior said: "The screening the school is proposing will put some homes in shadow all the time."

Stephen Lampard from the school's architects Format Milton said the building was being kept at the northern edge of the 35-acre site to maximise the area of playing fields available. "We have tried hard to minimise the effect on neighbouring homes."

Dr Hazlewood said the idea of a single site school had been under discussion for four to five years. "Throughout that time we have gained wholehearted support," he said.

The annual cost of transporting students and teachers between the two sites and having duplicate support services came to £300,000, three times what St John's spends a year on books.

He said to refurbish the present buildings would cost £9million and if St John's kept the present buildings there would be a capacity for 800 students. He said the number of pupils expected in September was 1,500 and this was due to expand to 1,600.