The boss of Marks & Spencer has launched an angry attack on Michael Gove after the communities secretary refused permission for the retail giant to knock down and redevelop its flagship shop on London’s Oxford Street.
Stuart Machin, the M&S chief executive, said the decision was “utterly pathetic” and meant the company will review its future on the country’s busiest shopping street.
It was an act of “self-sabotage” by Gove that would have an effect on “the nation’s fragile economic recovery”, he said.
The company’s plans to demolish the 1920s Art Deco store — Orchard House — and replace it and two neighbouring buildings with a ten-storey retail and office block was given planning permission by Westminster city council in 2021.
But it ran into
