M&S wins legal challenge over Gove’s block on Oxford Street store revamp | Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer has claimed victory after Michael Gove’s decision to block a controversial plan to raze and redevelop its main store on London’s Oxford Street was ruled to be unlawful.

The levelling up secretary refused permission to redevelop the store near Marble Arch in the West End in July last year, in a win for campaigners concerned about the carbon footprint of the plan.

In August M&S mounted a legal challenge to that decision and on Friday morning a high court judgment revealed the judge had sided with the retailer.

The M&S operations director, Sacha Berendji, said the “judgment couldn’t be clearer”. “The court has agreed with our arguments on five out of the six counts we brought forward and ruled that the secretary of state’s decision to block the redevelopment of our Marble Arch store was unlawful,” he added.

He added that Gove’s intervention – which was contrary to the recommendation from inspectors to approve the plans – had caused a “long, unnecessary and costly delay to the only retail-led regeneration on Oxford Street which would deliver one of London’s greenest buildings, create thousands of new jobs and rejuvenate the capital’s premier shopping district”.

Berendji said the ball was back in Gove’s court and the minister now had the “power to unlock the wide-ranging benefits of this significant investment” and “send a clear message to UK and global business that the government supports sustainable growth and the regeneration of our towns and cities”.

When Gove, who can appeal against the ruling, blocked the plan last year he said he had done so partly because it would “fail to support the transition to a low-carbon future, and would overall fail to encourage the reuse of existing resources, including the conversion of existing buildings”.

At the time, Berendji said Gove had “wrongly interpreted and applied planning policy to justify his rejection of our scheme on grounds of heritage and environmental concerns”.

The row over the fate of the store, one of two that M&S has on Oxford Street, has been a cause célèbre in recent years in the battle over the carbon footprint of redevelopment projects during the climate crisis and the fate of Britain’s struggling high streets.

Gove ordered a public inquiry in June 2022 into the plan to demolish and rebuild the store, with prize-winning architects, academics, heritage campaigners and the author Bill Bryson voicing opposition to the retailer’s plans, claiming the project would release 40,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

While the planning inspector recommended the project should go ahead, partly because any decision that made closure and partial vacancy of the site more probable “would intensify the concerns for the vitality and viability of Oxford Street”, Gove chose to disagree with that decision.

In recent years Oxford Street has lost its lustre because of the growing number of empty stores while troublesome candy and souvenir shops had moved in. However, recent figures suggest that its fortunes have begun to improve, and the proportion of vacant shops is down by 40%.