Marks and Spencer : M&S announces Newcastle store transformation with £13 million investment in North East

• M&S store in Newcastle city centre to undergo multi-million pound design transformation, including a fresh-market style Foodhall and a new stylish and spacious Clothing, Home & Beauty department.
• Plans to update and redesign the popular Newcastle store are part of £13m investment in the North East, with a new 47,000 sq ft store in Washington Galleries expected to open next year.
• Investment builds on previous works last year to update two more stores in Newcastle - M&S Silverlink and M&S Gosforth Foodhall - which have now relaunched with the retailer's new design and feature in-store technologies to make shopping more convenient, including Digital Click & Collect and mobile in-app purchasing with Scan & Shop

Today, M&S announced a £13 million investment in its North East store estate for the year ahead, with confirmation that the interior of the retailer's Northumberland Street store will be transformed in a top-to-bottom, multi-million pound redesign, offering Newcastle city centre shoppers the very best of M&S with a fresh-market style Foodhall and a new, refreshed Clothing, Home & Beauty department.

Works at the M&S Newcastle store, which has been a fixture of the city's high street since it first opened its doors in 1932, will begin this month. The redesign will be carried out in stages so the store can stay open, serving customer as normal throughout, with the new Foodhall expected to be fully completed later this year. Improvements to the Clothing, Home & Beauty department will follow and be completed by early 2024.

The news follows the announcement that the retailer is set to open a brand-new, bigger M&S store at the Galleries Retail Park in Washington. The exciting new store will offer local customers a bigger range of M&S products than ever before, with the retailer relocating from its existing Simply Food store into a 47,000 sq ft space with a new Clothing, Home & Beauty department and a bigger M&S Foodhall - nearly double the size of the current offering.

Construction work is already underway to bring together three previously separate units on the Galleries Retail Park to create the new space. Ahead of the relocation, the existing M&S Simply Food store in Washington will stay open as normal until the new story is ready - expected to be in spring 2024. There will be opportunities for all colleagues working in the current store to transfer to the new M&S Washington Galleries or other local M&S stores and the retailer has confirmed the new store will also create additional new jobs for the local community when it opens next year.

The £13 million announcement follows investment in the North East by M&S last year to update its store in Newcastle's Silverlink Shopping Park and the M&S Foodhall in Gosforth.

M&S has 21 owned stores across the North East - spanning the region from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Teesside, supporting over 2,100 jobs in local communities, as well as an additional 6 M&S stores in hospitals and travel settings including rail and fuel stations. This latest round of investment will enable the retailer to reach even more customers in the North East, delivering the very best of M&S with the latest store design and new in-store technology to offer a seamless omnichannel experience for customers, including mobile "Scan & Shop" - currently used by 33,000 customers each week - which lets shoppers use their phones to scan and bag items as they shop and digital screens to help make it quicker and easier to Click & Collect orders, with parcels ready in under 60 seconds.

Helen Cowie, Regional Manager for the North East at M&S, said: "M&S has been a part of local communities across the North East for well over a hundred years, and throughout that time we've always been innovating to keep delivering an excellent shopping experience for our customers - whether it's the opening of one of our first ever Penny Bazaars in Newcastle's famous Grainger Market in 1895, or launching our first ever shopping centre site in the country at the Metro Centre in 1986.

"We're proud to have been trading from our store on Northumberland Street since 1932. Over the years we've undertaken plenty of refurbishments and extensions to make sure the store keeps delivering for local customers and today's investment - as well as our plans for an exciting new store at Washington Galleries - shows that we're as committed as ever to offering shoppers in the North East the very best of M&S."

^{M&S has been trading from the store on Northumberland Street since 1932 - and this month will begin a top-to-bottom transformation of the store's design}

Investing in our new store renewal programme

The renewal of M&S Newcastle and the new store in Washington Galleries are key parts of the retailer's £480 million investment in bigger, better stores across the UK, generating over 3,400 new jobs and creating a fit for the future M&S store estate which provides a seamless experience for customers every time they shop.

M&S recently shared its ambition to accelerate what is a five year store rotation programme and target delivery within three years - by 2025/26. As part of its programme acceleration, M&S is already expecting to open 20 new bigger, better stores in total this year, including 12 new M&S Foodhalls and renew an additional 12 existing M&S stores with the latest new store design and technology.

Supporting thousands of jobs across the North East and supporting local communities

M&S supports local employment across the region, providing over 2,100 jobs across its 21 owned stores in the North East. The retailer was recently awarded Employer of the Year in the Movement to Work Youth Employability Awards in recognition of its Marks & Start programme. Run in partnership with The Prince's Trust, the programme has been going for over 10 years, and this year alone has supported 30 young people in the North East with work experience, with over 80% of them going on to secure employment with M&S.

M&S stores in the North East recently reached the milestone of 2 million meals donated to charities and good causes across the region through its partnership with Neighbourly which launched in 2013. Now in its eleventh year, the food surplus donation scheme is helping to redistribute more fresh, good quality food that is too good to waste than ever before with M&S' 2023 Sustainability Report recording a 46% reduction in food waste across the country. This sets the retailers on track to meets its Plan A sustainability roadmap to halve food waste by 2030.

In the North East alone, the food surplus prevented from going to waste has saved the equivalent of 3,380 tonnes of CO2 emissions. M&S is also targeting 100% of edible surplus to be redistributed by 2023 as part of its roadmap to net zero. Integrated across the business, Plan A has been pioneering since its inception in 2007 and driven M&S to tackle the issues that matter most to customers, from delivering a net zero business by 2040, to reducing food waste, plastic packaging and maintaining high animal welfare standards. The full M&S 2023 Sustainability Report is available to view here.

03 Aug 20232023Store estate