SWANSEA: M&S needs 300 parking spaces at the door to come back, council leader says

A full Marks & Spencer will only come back to Swansea if a site can be found with upwards of 300 parking spaces directly outside the door, the city’s council leader says.

Until then, the nearest full-line store for Swansea shoppers is Parc Trostre in Llanelli. M&S still has food halls at Carmarthen Road Retail Park in Fforestfach and in Mumbles.

Cllr Rob Stewart told full council last Thursday that 300 spaces was what the retailer’s business model for a full-service store required, and that the council was working with it on that. “It’s very difficult to provide that sort of requirement in a city centre anywhere,” he said.

In Swansea, it would mean demolishing “large parts of the surrounding area of any store”, he added.

Cllr Stuart Rice, the Uplands Party councillor for Uplands, asked the leader whether it was “sad” that the retailer had “more faith in” Caerphilly than in Swansea.

He was referring to M&S plans for a standalone Foodhall at Unit 18, Gallagher Retail Park, in place of the What! store there, which is reported to bring around 70 jobs if approved. Like the two food halls M&S still runs in Swansea, it would not be a full-line store.

Cllr Stewart said no. The council was in “active discussions with M&S about a new location in Swansea”, he said, and the retailer is “currently looking at sites”.

Councillors would also hear “in the next few months” of other national names the council is talking to, he said.

Why Carmarthen Road Retail Park and the old Debenhams are out for M&S

The retailer announced in February that its Oxford Street store would close after a “sustained decline in sales over 10 years”, saying it was looking for a site for “a future full-line M&S store in Swansea”.

The old Debenhams was once suggested as a new home, but Cllr Stewart has said the retailer turned the idea down.

Carmarthen Road Retail Park, where M&S has its food hall, is out too, the leader told Cllr Angela O’Connor when she asked about it. The retailer once had a clothing store across the road at Parc Fforestfach.

He said M&S wanted somewhere “as close to or in the city centre as possible”, and the retail park would be “too far out”.

For comparison, the M&S Food planned for Waterton Road in Bridgend would share 335 parking spaces with an Aldi and a Costa drive-through.

What happens to the empty M&S on Oxford Street

The store on Oxford Street closed on 30 May after 69 years, with 92 staff, and has been blacked out ever since.

M&S has now appointed property agents “to consider options” for the building, Cllr Stewart said in a written answer to councillors before the meeting. The answer does not say whether it is to be sold or let.

Council officers are “in regular contact with the agents”, he said.

When will we know what is going in the old Debenhams at the Quadrant?

There is still no date, but the leader says two of the three names are close. He told councillors he had been assured by lead officers that they were “extremely close to being able to announce at least two of the three new tenants in the near future”.

He added: “There is nobody more frustrated than I at the moment that I cannot publicly say who those are.”

It is six months since Cllr Stewart said, as the building was sold to Centurion, that the names would follow “within the coming days”. Centurion’s Jane Rice said then that the firm had “three major tenants lined up” and wanted them open before the end of 2026.

Centurion also owns the Quadrant Shopping Centre and the Parc Tawe retail park close to the city centre.

Cllr Rice asked the leader last Thursday to “define in days or imminent”. Cllr Stewart said big developments often take time to secure tenants, pointing to leases, rent-free periods, fit-out costs and reconfiguring the building.

His written answer before the meeting said talks with “3 prospective retail and leisure occupiers are at an advanced stage, and announcements are imminent”. The council “can only announce with the permission of the tenants”, he said.

The building has stood empty since Debenhams went into liquidation in 2021. Swansea Council bought it in 2023 for about £2.85m of Welsh Government Transforming Towns money, stripped it back and sold it to Centurion.