Gove delays M&S Oxford Street demolition ruling until July

The result of the two-week-long planning inquiry, which ended last November and saw M&S pitted against SAVE Britain's Heritage, had been expected to be issued next week at the latest (‘on or before 3 May’).

But the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) has said that ‘further time [is] required’ for the secretary of state to consider the case.

DLUHC said a final decision on the inquiry, which was carried out by planning inspector David Nicholson, will now be issued ‘on or before 20 July, 2023’, adding: ‘We aim to issue the decision as quickly as possible.’ The department declined to comment on the reasons for requiring extra time to consider the case.

Last year, M&S’s plans to bulldoze its flagship 1929 store on Oxford Street sparked a public row over the role of embodied carbon in construction and the case for a retrofit-first approach with SAVE joining forces with AJ's RetroFirst campaign to highlight the environmental and heritage cost of the proposal and press for a public inquiry.

The most controversial aspect of the case was the projected release of 39,500 tonnes of embodied carbon into the atmosphere caused by the construction of the proposed 10‑storey office and retail block replacement, based on Arup’s whole-life carbon assessment.

This up-front carbon cost prompted claims that M&S’s scheme contravened national planning policy and the path to the UK’s ambitious net zero target.

Conservationists, led by SAVE Britain’s Heritage, had also made a case on architectural grounds that flattening the ‘handsome’ 1929 landmark at Marble Arch, adjacent to the Grade II star-listed Selfridges, would leave Oxford Street 'unrecognisable' without one of its original buildings.

With the dispute making national headlines, in June 2022, Gove ordered a planning inquiry to examine whether Westminster Council was correct to give planning permission for the project and whether it was in keeping with planning rules in respect of  heritage and the historic environment.

Shortly after the inquiry ended, SAVE Britain’s Heritage accused M&S  of ‘greenwashing on an epic scale’ in its environmental justifications for demolishing the building.

M&S, which has vowed to abandon its flagship store if the redevelopment plans are rejected, had said that the charity had ‘accepted M&S’s sustainability analysis and that of our independent experts Arup,' a claim fiercely denied by SAVE, which accused the chair of the retail giant of ‘false and defamatory’ statements.

The retail giant has continued to push its case in recent weeks. In a blog post published earlier this month, entitled Reviving Oxford Street with a revitalised M&S, the company's operations director Sacha Berendji insisted it had 'explored retrofitting the store - but with its three poor-quality structured buildings and asbestos challenges (although completely safe), it soon became clear that was unworkable'.

Arguing that the current store was 'no longer fit for purpose', he said plans for the building represented an 'innovative and sustainable design for a new Marble Arch store that has so far been approved at every stage, including by Westminster Council and the GLA, and is backed by many local businesses'.