Marks & Spencer to open 20 new stores: is your area on the list?

Marks & Spencer (M&S) is revamping its store estate, with plans to open 20 ‘bigger and better’ branches.

However, while some areas might be getting a boost, others will be losing their local store. In October, M&S announced it would close a further 67 underperforming full-line sites (stores that offer the full range of products from food to clothing).

Read on to find out if you're getting an M&S near you, plus more details on how the M&S shopping experience is set to change.

Where is M&S opening stores?

M&S is to open 20 branches by April next year, in an acceleration of its branch plans.

Eight of the shops will be full-line stores selling M&S’s complete clothing, home and food ranges. 

Five of these full-range shops will be relocations of existing shopping centre stores, with M&S taking over units formerly occupied by Debenhams branches in Leeds White Rose (expected summer 2023), Liverpool One (expected summer 2023), Birmingham Bullring (autumn 2023), Manchester Trafford Centre (winter 2023) and Lakeside Thurrock (winter 2023).

Another of the full-line stores will be in Purley Way, south London, which is expected by summer 2023, but M&S would not reveal the location of the remaining two planned stores featuring its full range of products.

The other 12 new stores, meanwhile, will be food halls. Locations of these food halls will include Stockport in Greater Manchester, (expected summer 2023), Barnsley in South Yorkshire (expected autumn 2023) and Largs in North Ayrshire (expected winter 2023). M&S said it couldn't share details on the other nine new food halls at the moment.

All the planned stores are set to open in M&S’s 2023-24 financial year, which runs from April to April. 

M&S said its plans have brought new store investment to £480m and will create more than 3,400 jobs.

Alongside investing in its owned stores, M&S has plans to expand its convenience offer too. It intends to extend its franchise deals and build on its partnerships with BP, Costa, Moto and SSP. 

M&S did not share details of the scale of this expansion or the location of any new partnership and franchise store locations.

• Find out more: supermarket price comparison

Which M&S stores are closing?

M&S has had a turbulent time of it in recent years, struggling to attract younger shoppers to its clothing departments despite numerous celebrity-fronted marketing campaigns.

In October, it announced it was closing 67 of its underperforming full-line stores in high streets within the next five years. 

The retailer would not confirm details of the locations of the stores due to close.  

M&S has closed or relocated 20 stores since 2021.

Is M&S disappearing from the high street?

M&S is aiming to have 180 full-line branches by April 2026, down from about 247, and grow the number of Simply Food sites from about 316 to 420.

The retailer told Which? that the overhaul of its store estate will end up generating more stores overall. It currently has 563 stores, but its total number will rise to 600 by April 2026.

M&S CEO Stuart Machin said: ‘Our store rotation programme is about making sure we have the right stores, in the right place, with the right space, and we’re aiming to rotate from the 247 stores we have today to 180 higher-quality, higher-productivity full-line stores that sell our full clothing, home and food offer while also opening over 100 bigger, better food sites.’

M&S added that a recent store relocation in Chesterfield – from an ‘ageing town-centre site’ to a 46,000 sq ft shop in Ravenside Retail Park in Bexhill, East Sussex – resulted in sales growing by 103% year on year in December 2022.

M&S isn’t the only retailer making massive adjustments to its store estate. 

A report by the Centre for Retail Research published in January 2023 revealed that 17,145 shops shut their doors permanently in 2022, which is equivalent to around 47 stores per day.

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What do people think of shopping with M&S?

In our annual supermarkets survey, more than 200 M&S customers rated the retailer on everything from queuing time, to food quality and value for money.

One happy customer said: 'I seriously love M&S, it is part of my childhood and culture. The food is the best you can get.’ Another added: ‘Just love it! Fantastic products. Great quality.'

If you'd like to know how its food halls fared with grocery shoppers, check out our Marks & Spencer supermarket review, and to find out how it compared with other stores check out our guide on the best and worst supermarkets. 

We also survey thousands of shoppers each year to reveal what they think of the UK's biggest retailers. We ask customers to rate brands on value for money and customer service as well as product quality and availability across shopping categories.

You can find out what customers thought about the M&S shopping experience when it comes to buying clothes, shoes, furniture, homeware, and health and beauty products in our guide to the UK's best and worst shops.