Marks & Spencer has been given the green light to demolish its flagship Oxford Street store, marking a dramatic end to a three-year plan to build a war on art bankruptcy.
Secretary of Housing; Angela RaynerHe ordered that Thursday’s plans should be anticipated.
The developer wants to renovate the store as a nine-story building housing space, a cafe, a gym and an office.
Stuart Machin, chief executive of M&S, wrote on Thursday: “I am delighted that after three years of unnecessary delays, obfuscation and politics under the worst previous government, our plans for Marble Arch – a unique retail-led regeneration proposal in Oxford Street – has finally been approved. “
He said the business could “now progress with the task of helping to renew the UK’s premier shopping street” through the flagship store.
The building, called Orchard House, was built in the late 1920s on the corner of the most famous shopping street in the UK, by Marble Arch in London.
M&S, which opened the store in 1930, has applied to Westminster city planning to be allowed to demolish Orchard House in 2021.
There are plans because it was followed by court cases and opposition from heritage and sustainability experts, culminating in the then-housing secretary Michael Gove entering and finally refusing the application in July 2013.
However, this year the Supreme Court ruled that the government had made a series of flawed decisions in an attempt to block plans.
On Thursday, Rainer granted a building permit for demolition and reconstruction.