THE FORMER school building at Johnston will be demolished, and a new bat house will be built to provide a home for the roosting mammals once it is gone.

The old Johnston CP Primary School building at Cranham Park has been empty since the building closed in 2016, with the school moving to a new build on Langford Road.

An application to demolish the building by Pembrokeshire County Council was previously turned down by the council planning officer in December last year.

The planning authority said details of how the building would be demolished while avoiding disruption to local roosting bats needed to be submitted, as well as providing a new roost site.

A report by TerrAqua Ecological Services in the previous application found small, summer roosting populations of three bat species in the building: common pipistrelle, soprano pipistrelle and brown long-eared bats.

The report recommended a purpose-built bat house should be erected in the grounds of the school before demolition work is carried out.

TerrAqua has also written a method statement for mitigating the effect of the demolition on the local bat population for the current application.

The method statement says fascia boards on the building, which bats often shelter behind or use to enter buildings, will be removed this month to reduce the bats ability to roost there.

Two bat boxes will be built to the east of the site to mitigate for the loss of the bats’ roost.

A bat house will also be built on the south eastern area of the school site before demolition work begins.

Conditions for granting the permission included that the council should carry out work while following the recommendations of the TerrAqua report, and that the bat house should be completely before demolition commences.

Demolition work will only be allowed between 8am and 5pm.

See planning application: 17/0968/PA