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Marks & Spencer (M&S) is to demolish its flagship Oxford Street store after three years of planning delays for the art deco building.
Plans to rejuvenate the building as a nine-storey retail space, cafe, gym and offices will go ahead after Housing Secretary Angela Rayner gave the go-ahead.
M&S says its new store will be among the top 1 per cent of buildings in London in terms of sustainable performance, will have a design life of 120 years and will be carbon depreciated within 11 years of being built.
After opposition from sustainability and heritage experts sparked years of legal wrangling, former Housing Secretary Michael Gove intervened to reject the application in July 2023.
M&S chief executive Stuart Machin said: “I am delighted that, after three unnecessary years of delays, obfuscation and political posturing at its worst under the previous government, our plans for Marble Arch, the only led regeneration proposal by the retail trade on Oxford Street, have finally been approved.
“We can now get on with the work of helping to rejuvenate the UK’s high street through an M&S flagship store and office space that will create 2,000 jobs and act as a global standard-bearer for sustainability.
“At M&S, we share the Government’s ambition to bring life back to our cities and towns and we are pleased to see them getting serious about getting Britain built and growing. “Now we will move forward as quickly as we can.”
Orchard House, the building that M&S will demolish, was built in the late 1920s at the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street. M&S opened its flagship store in the building in 1930, before applying to Westminster City Council for permission to demolish it in 2021.
After Gove rejected the plans in July 2021, a high court judge ruled that the government had made a series of wrong decisions in blocking the plans. On Thursday, Mrs Rayner granted permission for the building to be demolished and rebuilt.
