Marks & Spencer has been refused permission to demolish and rebuild its main store on Oxford Street in the West End of London in a win for campaigners concerned about the carbon footprint of redevelopment.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities confirmed that Michael Gove, the secretary of state, disagreed with the recommendation from inspectors to approve the plans and had “decided to refuse permission”.
Stuart Machin, the chief executive of M&S, said the decision left the retailer with “no choice but to review its future position” on the UK’s premier high street - where it currently has two stores - “on the whim of one man”.
He accused Gove of “playing to the gallery” with the decision, which he said was a “shortsighted act of self-sabotage” the effects of which would be “felt far beyond the West End”.
Machin insisted that a retrofit for the building was “not an option – despite us reviewing sixteen different options” and accused Gove of “choking off growth and denying Oxford Street thousands of new quality jobs”.
He continued his attack in an opinion piece for the Telegraph in which he said Gove’s move sent a “chilling message to the towns and cities across the UK in desperate need of regeneration”.
M&S is currently reviewing its options which could include a legal challenge to Gove’s decision – although that is understood to be a potentially expensive option.
Machin said: “It is particularly galling given there are currently 17 approved and proceeding demolitions in Westminster and four on Oxford Street alone making it unfathomable why M&S’s proposal to redevelop an aged and labyrinthian site that has been twice denied listed status has been singled out for refusal.”
Gove said he had refused permission partly because it would “fail to support the transition to a low carbon future, and would overall fail to encourage the reuse of existing resources, including the conversion of existing buildings”.
In a written decision, posted online, Gove said he was not convinced that M&S and its architects had thoroughly explored the alternatives to demolition of the existing buildings and that the public benefits of the new development did not “outweigh the harm to the significance of a number of designated heritage assets” including the nearby Selfridges department store.
Gove did not agree with the planning inspector’s assessment that refusing the development would lead to substantial harm to the viability of Oxford Street and the surrounding area.
In his report, which was published alongside Gove’s decision, the planning inspector David Nicholson, who oversaw a two-week inquiry into the M&S scheme last autumn, recommended the project should go ahead partly because any decision that made closure and partial vacancy of the site more probable “would intensify the concerns for the vitality and viability of Oxford Street”.
He concluded that if the scheme was not given approval then “sooner or later”, the store would close and would not be replaced by “comparable retail concerns”.
While Gove said there would be some negative impact from his decision, he added that “the extent of any such harm would be limited”.
Henrietta Billings, the director of the charity SAVE Britain’s Heritage, which has campaigned against M&S’s plan, said: “This is a hugely important decision that rightly challenges the way we continually and needlessly knock down and rebuild important buildings across our towns and cities.
“Repurposing and converting buildings we cherish and saving thousands of tonnes of CO2 in the process is a no brainer. This is a massive positive step and we salute the secretary of state.”
The row over the fate of the Oxford Street store has become a cause célèbre in the tussle over the shape of redevelopments and the fate of Britain’s high streets.
In June 2022, Gove ordered a public inquiry into the plan to demolish and rebuild the store.
Meanwhile, there has been difficulty filling empty sites on Oxford Street including the ones left by two other department stores – the former House of Fraser and Debenhams, which have closed down and are in the process of redevelopment, if not complete rebuilding.
Geoff Barraclough, Westminster city council’s cabinet member for planning and economic development,, said it was right that the case for redeveloping the M&S store should be “tested robustly”. He said the council’s position was to “encourage landowners to refurbish buildings, not demolish them”.
“Clearly this is a disappointing day for M&S but we hope they return with a revised scheme which meets the new tests presented by the climate emergency,” he said.
There has been a shift in sentiment towards refurbishing existing buildings rather than demolishing them, amid growing awareness of the carbon footprint and climate impact of such schemes.
Campaigners argued the M&S project would have released 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The retailer had said its planned development would use 25% less energy than the existing site – benefits the designers Pilbrow + Partners argued would last a century – with a maximum carbon payback of 17 years and potentially less than 10.
That argument won over Westminster council’s planning authorities, while the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, opted not to intervene, considering the M&S application to be in line with the capital’s planning strategy.
