Critics have continued to speak out against M&S over the retailer’s plans to redevelop its Marble Arch flagship store due to the environmental cost of demolishing and replacing older buildings.
The retailer plans to demolish its 1930s art deco-style building as well as the two neighbouring properties, replacing them with new offices and a fresh store. The redevelopment bid has raised questions about the carbon footprint of knocking down and replacing older buildings as opposed to retrofitting them.
Conservation group Save Britain’s Heritage described the case as “pivotal” to helping the UK reduce carbon emissions from the built environment, which is responsible for some 25% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Opponents to the plan have said demolishing the retail building will release and waste 40,000 tonnes of embodied carbon – that is, the emissions created in the sourcing and manufacturing of the materials being destroyed.
The row has been ongoing over the past year, with M&S CEO Stuart Machin continuing to insist the controversial redevelopment plans are the only workable solution to save the store, which is “riddled with asbestos”.
M&S had explored retrofitting the store but Machin deemed the plans “unworkable”, pointing out that the current site required “significant and unsustainable investment” to keep running.
Subscribe to Sustainability Beat for free
Sign up here to get the latest sustainability news sent straight to your inbox each morning
“If we leave M&S Marble Arch to continue trading as it is, the building’s energy efficiency – which is unfortunately already very poor – will only continue to deteriorate,” he said earlier this year.
But a June report from consulting group Mace highlighted that the construction industry is more than capable of repurposing older commercial buildings to meet today’s higher energy efficiency standards.
Save Britain’s Heritage director Henrietta Billings told the Financial Times the plans were “a major test of our disposable, knock-it-down and rebuild attitude, with potentially far-reaching consequence for construction and development”.
While M&S says energy savings from the new modern building will make up for the emissions from demolition and reconstruction, Save Britain’s Heritage says the retailer is making “unreliable and unrealistic” claims. The group believes it would take at least 30 years to make up for the emissions already lost.
It also says that the proposal does not tally with M&S’ aim to become fully carbon neutral by 2040.
Following November’s enquiry into the proposal, a final decision on the retailer’s redevelopment plans will be made by levelling up secretary Michael Gove later this week, on Thursday 20 July.
M&S property, technology and development director Sacha Berendji previously accused the minister of blocking “the only retail-led regeneration in the whole of Oxford Street.”
