Marks & Spencer plans to close 80 traditional stores – with those in declining town and city centres most likely to be axed, the company’s chairman has revealed. Speaking at an event in Leeds, Archie Norman revealed more details about the company’s ongoing £500m “store rotation programme” and said M&S is looking to exit struggling town centres. The company announced in 2022 it intended to reduce its number of traditional “full line” shops offering its complete range of clothing, food and home products from 247 to 180, while also opening 100 new food halls by April 2026. Speaking about the firm’s current position, Mr Norman told an audience at the UKREiiF real estate conference that the programme of closures will be more extensive as the company evolves its estate. He said: “We have 230 full line stores, our chief executive Stuart Machin has said he wants to have 180 so that's 50 less but we want to close 80 and then reopen 30. "We are going to put the money behind that. We are going to spend hundreds of millions and that money is available for communities to come up with great solutions.”
00:00If you take Colchester, which is a place to come forward, Colchester is a good town, and it's a lovely town, we've been there for decades and decades, had a town centre store on four floors with asbestos, very expensive to maintain and service, and we couldn't find the right solution to town centre, so we've gone on to the retail park, which is 10-15 minutes away, our sales are running at roughly 180-200% of what we have.
00:30We're pleasing a lot more shoppers, we're doing a lot more business, it's been great for Colchester, we're nothing against the town centre, but we have no choice, that's what we need to do, and we're looking at that situation all across the country, and as I said, there's no policy on our part to move out of town, we just want to be where the customers are.
