Not just any building: why plans for the M&S
flagship store hit a raw nerve
Bid to raze and rebuild Oxford St store stirs debate
over carbon footprints and future development of UK high streets
Sarah
Butler
@whatbutlersaw
Fri 24 Jun
2022 14.45 BST
Margaret
Thatcher was effusive as she admired a £200 cashmere sweater. “That’s lovely.
Now that is what I call an investment,” she remarked. The then prime minister
was visiting Marks & Spencer’s newly extended store at Marble Arch in 1987
as shoppers readied for Christmas. Thatcher was flanked by Lord Rayner, the
retailer’s chairman, as she spent almost two hours touring the store, meeting
staff, greeting customers and choosing a few items.
More than
three decades later, relations between the high street stalwart and the current
Conservative regime are far less cordial, as a row over the same shop on
London’s Oxford Street threatens to become a cause célèbre in the battle over
the shape of redevelopments and the fate of Britain’s high streets.
This week
Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities,
ordered a public inquiry into the plan to demolish and rebuild the flagship
store on the most famous of Britain’s high streets.
Campaigners
argue the project would release 40,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, while
M&S says that government intervention into its “significant investment in
one of our most iconic shopping locations” could have “a chilling effect for
regeneration programmes across the country”.
Sacha
Berendji, the M&S property director, pointed to Oxford Street’s struggles
to fill empty shops as big retailers have stepped away, saying Gove “appears to
prefer a proliferation of stores hawking counterfeit goods to a gold-standard
retail-led regeneration of the nation’s favourite high street”.
M&S has
refurbished other stores – such as Cheltenham and Chelmsford – but says
rejigging the existing Marble Arch shop, created over decades from a merger of
three no longer suitable buildings, some of which contain asbestos, is not
viable.
The
retailer argues that any significant redevelopment of the existing building
would involve creating additional carbon emissions without delivering as many
benefits of its new building. Its planned development is set to use 25% less
energy than the existing site – benefits its designers Pilbrow + Partners argue
will last a century – with a maximum carbon payback of 17 years and potentially
less than 10.
That
argument won over Westminster council’s planning authorities, while the London
mayor, Sadiq Khan, opted not to intervene over the M&S application,
consideringit in line with the capital’s planning strategy.
With high
streets around the country needing redevelopment to suit modern demands while
the climate crisis intensifies, the debate over whether troubled buildings
should be refurbished or redeveloped will only become more heated.
Will Hurst,
the managing editor of the Architects’ Journal, which backed a letter calling
on Gove to intervene in M&S’s Oxford Street plans, has been raising
awareness of the carbon footprint of new-builds via its Retro First campaign.
He says three-quarters of local authorities have now declared a climate emergency
but “many of them haven’t got to grips when it comes to planning and
development”.
He says
more than a third of the lifetime emissions of a typical office block and more
than half that of residential buildings are used up in construction, so for
councils with such environmental concerns it will become “nonsensical to keep
waving proposals through” on new-builds.
“People are
starting to realise the impact of reuse on a huge scale, like construction,
because they understand it on the small scale,” he says. “They are looking at
buying secondhand clothes or realising they shouldn’t change their smartphone
every six months.”
Nicholas
Boys Smith, the director of the thinktank Create Streets, says: “Clearly the
expectation of the public and the political process is moving. Change is on the
way without a shadow of a doubt.”
With carbon
concerns rising up the agenda, he says there will be “some inconsistency” in
decision making and some councils and developers will be caught out.
The M&S
plans may have attracted national attention, but similar projects nearby, such
as the demolition and redevelopment of a House of Fraser store in Victoria,
have seemingly been waved through without much drama.
An entire
town centre is scheduled to be hit by the wrecking ball in Cumbernauld in Scotland,
as is a former Debenhams in Torquay, Devon, while there are battles over plans
to knock down a Debenhams in Taunton. An application to raze another in
Harrogate has recently been withdrawn.
On Oxford
Street alone, some stores have already been demolished and rebuilt. However,
the former Debenhams, House of Fraser, Next and Topshop stores are all being
refitted rather than razed.
Outside
London, there are numerous examples of building rejigs including the Jenners
building in Edinburgh and the Hammonds of Hull food hall which was created
within a former House of Fraser.
Melanie
Leech, the chief executive of the British Property Federation, says developers
are “already embracing the circular economy and responding to the market demand
for more sustainable buildings”. She called on the government to do more to
accelerate progress including planning reforms to prioritise the reuse of
buildings and a VAT exemption for refurbishment works.
In
Westminster, there may yet be a change of tack on M&S’s project after the
Conservative administration was pushed out by Labour in recent council
elections for the first time since its creation in 1964.
Geoff
Barraclough, a councillor responsible for planning, said: “The council is
serious about reducing the environmental impact of new development by
emphasising the benefits of retrofitting over demolition.”
He welcomed
Gove’s intervention, saying “all the issues raised by this case can be
rigorously tested”.
Henrietta Billings, the director of Save Britain’s
Heritage, adds: “There are plenty of examples where you can, with a bit of
imagination, revise existing buildings without having to knock them down.
“We have got to get to a point where demolishing
buildings unnecessarily is unacceptable because of the environmental costs –
where [demolition] is the last resort rather than the first resort.”
M&S Oxford Street store plan opposed by
author Bill Bryson and architects
Raze-and-rebuild proposal for London shop led to
carbon footprint debate, with public inquiry looming
@whatbutlersaw
Mon 15 Aug
2022 06.00 BST
The author
Bill Bryson and architects including the Stirling prize winner Steve Tompkins
and Mark Hines, the project director for the remodelling of BBC Broadcasting
House, have lined up to oppose plans to flatten Marks & Spencer’s store on
London’s Oxford Street.
Bryson, who
is best known for Notes from a Small Island and A Short History of Nearly
Everything, has donated £500 to a fighting fund established by the campaign
group Save Britain’s Heritage in the run-up to a public inquiry into the plan –
under which M&S wants to build a new store and offices on the same site –
ordered by the former communities secretary Michael Gove in June.
The scheme
has become a poster child for the debate over a shift to retrofitting and
refurbishing buildings rather than demolition and rebuilding, as part of
efforts to cut the carbon footprint of development amid the climate crisis.
A report
produced by the architect and net zero expert Simon Sturgis commissioned by
Save argued that the M&S proposals were not compliant with the government’s
net zero commitments or the Greater London Authority’s policy to prioritise
retrofit.
However,
M&S says its proposed new building would use less than a quarter of the
energy of today’s structure, and the fabric of the existing site, known as the
Arch, which is made up of three buildings of different ages with asbestos
throughout, means that refurbishment is not a realistic option.
Stuart
Machin, the co-chief executive of M&S, said: “Our investment will deliver
far more than carbon reduction; it will be a better place for our customers to
shop, a better place for our colleagues to work, and a better public realm for
our community. Today and tomorrow.”
M&S
looks likely to face considerable opposition to its plans as the crowdfunder,
to cover Save’s legal costs in opposing M&S at the inquiry, which kicks off
on 25 October, has a target of £20,000 and is approaching the halfway mark.
Bryson, who
announced his retirement in 2020, told the Architects’ Journal, which first reported
his involvement in the campaign: “I believe it would be a great shame to tear
down the M&S building. I have no special knowledge or insights about the
matter. I just wish to help stop a bit of foolishness.”
Tompkins, a
co-founder of Architects Declare who led the recent redesign of the National
Theatre in London, wrote in his letter opposing the scheme: “Number 458 Oxford
Street is a handsome piece of urban architecture, made with high-quality
durable materials. It is a successful component of the wider streetscape and a
familiar London landmark. For these reasons, the building appears to be an
entirely suitable candidate for deep retrofitting.”
The list of
opponents also includes Ian Ritchie Architects, which worked on the Louvre’s
pyramid extension, and the sustainable design specialist Sarah Wigglesworth, as
well as the Conservative MP Duncan Baker – who introduced a private member’s
bill on embodied carbon earlier in the Commons earlier this year.
Wigglesworth
said in her letter that demolishing and rebuilding the store would be a
“climate crime” amid a planetary emergency “the like of which we have never
experienced before”.
The
demolition and replacement scheme led by the architecture firm Pilbrow &
Partners, which would release almost 40,000 tonnes of carbon into the
atmosphere, was approved by Westminster city council and the Greater London
Authority led by the mayor, Sadiq Khan, but was then called in by Gove.
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