I've never worked on this car before but need to do the brakes and the reservoir is buried under the air intake vent for the cabin. Do I need to remove this to access the reservoir? it seems almost impossible to even top the fluid up as it is and the videos I've checked on this show the reservoir being mounted to the two plastic studs to the left of the current location so much more accessible.

Some models do have the remote reservoir mounted slightly further forward.  Possibly engine specific.  Although as yours has the mounting points it seems odd not to use them!

The two choices you have are either getting a thin flexible tube to top up the reservoir, or removing the wiper arms and plastic scuttle panel, and possibly the metal one underneath it as well.

Yeah I suspected there wasn't going to be an easy fix, thought there might have been an easy pop off panel or something as I can't imagine the cap will come off with so little clearance.

It’s fiddly but it is possible to get the cap off and top the reservoir up without removing extra panels. 
 

Just about able to screw an ezibleed cap on there which would have also topped up the fluid - otherwise using a small syringe etc would help

Thanks, I had a go and it was easier than I imagines, just half a dozen clips and it all lifts off, needed  to get a one man kit onto it so filling with a pipe etc wasn't going to work for me.

I tend to avoid taking the leafscreen panel off if I can help it as the channel it clips into at the bottom of the windscreen can often get dislodged. It’s a bad design really as the direction you push the chanel in to seat it also helps push it off the bottom edge of the screen 🙄

Think mines bonded on with PU now

Yeah, it's an absolute pain compared to my mk1.