A mighty row has erupted after Michael Gove rejected Marks & Spencer’s plans to demolish and redevelop its flagship Oxford Street store.

Stuart Machin, M&S chief executive, blasted the Secretary of State in The Telegraph, saying he acted “capriciously” and that the decision “will have a chilling effect” on the country’s retail sector. 

Despite support from Westminster Council as well as the Greater London Authority and the estates which own 600 properties in the area, M&S’s plan to bulldoze their Marble Arch store was kiboshed by Michael Gove who said that it would “fail to support the transition to a low carbon future”. 

The levelling up secretary favoured a retrofit approach rather than a full demolition as knocking down the building would not only get rid of the interwar Art Deco facade but release huge amounts of embodied carbon into the atmosphere. 

However, Stuart Machin argued that the interwar facade has been “found to be of no merit by successive listing authorities” and that the new, energy-efficient building would “deliver a carbon payback within 11 years of construction.”

Machin also insisted that M&S is not against retrofitting. Indeed, this is what they have done to their Cheltenham and Chelmsford stores. But he argued that the retrofit option is impossible because the store is made up of three different “poorly-interconnected” buildings from different decades. 

Archie Norman, M&S chairman and former Tory MP, weighed in on a similar tone. He tweeted: “The existing building is mostly a concrete bunker riddled with asbestos.” He also said it is “Hard to underestimate how big a setback this is to the cause of inner city regeneration and what a mockery it makes of the UK planning system.”

However, some came to St Michael’s defence. Nicholas Boys Smith, founder of the Create Streets think-tank which advocates for the creation and preservation of “beautiful, sustainable places of gentle density”, said that Gove “deserves huge praise for withstanding aggressive lobbying from M&S.”

“The case for demolition was always gossamer thin, destroying a fine inter-war facade, making Oxford Street worse and burning oodles of embodied carbon in the process. M&S have read this completely wrong and are still digging.”

Boys Smith also argued that the Art Deco facade ought to be listed by Historic England while the “shoddy and faceless” seventies buildings joined onto it should be demolished.

It seems that both sides are talking past each other on whether the new building would be better or worse for the environment. Both sides are also arguing over which method – total redevelopment or retrofitting – would create the most jobs and be the better investment for the community. 

But it is clear that Boys Smith disagrees with Machin when he says that a retrofit is impossible – and while this Hound must admit it’s no architect, it is nonetheless inclined to agree.

What is also clear though is that the AI-generated images of M&S’s proposed redevelopment do not show a beautiful new site. They show a rather dull and generic building. Yes, the old buildings might be crumbling, but the Art Deco facade should be saved and new, beautiful, architecturally appropriate buildings should replace the seventies disasters. Good job, Gove.

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