Speculation mounts on future of Wolverhampton store as Marks and Spencer reveals plan to close 80 shops

This week, company chairman Archie Norman said the firm was looking to exit "struggling town centres" as part of a £500 million plan to update its retail store portfolio across the country.

Earlier this year, Wolverhampton Council said it was seeking talks with Marks & Spencer over the future of its 36,000 square foot store in Dudley Street, with the lease on the building due to expire in 2027.

The firm announced in 2022 it intended to reduce its number of traditional department stores offering its complete range of clothing, food and home products from 247 to 180, while also opening 100 new food halls by April 2026 - including in the former Cannock branch of Homebase, announced this week.

Speaking at the UKREiiF real estate conference event in Leeds on Thursday, the Mr Norman said it would commit to "thriving city centres" with "enlightened local authorities".

“There’s multiple examples where you have got a thriving centre, an enlightened local authority with a holistic regeneration programme to bring everything together and we really want to be part of that,” he said.

“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.

"But where you have got stasis and decline and there’s no holistic plan and spending power is diminishing and accessibility is even worse, it is not going to work for us.

“We’re so keen to work with local authorities and developments to find solutions but they’ve got to be imaginative solutions. Otherwise, we are leaving and we’re going out of town.

“There are multiple towns today where we are looking at when we are going to go and we’d love it if the local authority leaders would come together and find a solution for us. But if they can’t, we are going.”

Speaking at a meeting of full council in March, Cabinet member for development Councillor Chris Burden said the city council would do "all it could" to keep Marks & Spencer in Wolverhampton - but added that the authority was considering alternative uses for the building should the retailer decide to move out.

"Ultimately we know that cities and town centres across the country are changing, and in Wolverhampton we're undergoing that major transformation, and attracting significantly new investment into the leisure sector, and we will continue to do so," he said.

"We will be working with the new owner of the building on Dudley Street to secure future uses should they need to be secured in future," he said.

"We don't want to be reactive, we want to be absolutely proactive, if anything changes on the site."

In his address, Mr Norman added that the closure of an ageing town centre property in Colchester demonstrated the direction of travel for Marks & Spencer - and that changes in Essex there would be looked at elsewhere as part of the company's modernisation programme.

“We’re pleasing a lot more shoppers and doing a lot more business. We had nothing against the town centre but we had no choice. We’re looking at that situation all across the country," he added.