Cllr Janet Clowes (Conservative Group Leader) comments on the relocation of the Macclesfield Marks and Spencer Store:
“So M&S, Macclesfield’s principle anchor store, is quitting the heart of the town centre to relocate, out-of-town, to the Barracks Mill site in 2022/23.
This is depressing, as I muse on the Macclesfield Town Centre Recovery Plan, (02/2021) and on the optimistic rhetoric of the “Macclesfield Town Centre Strategic Regeneration Framework Delivery Plan (or SRF! 10.2019).
We already know the impact on Crewe, when in 2017, M&S did exactly the same thing - upped sticks and relocated to the Grand Junction site. They left a major vacant void in the heart of Crewe, a traffic congestion nightmare at Grand Junction and a gut-wrenching plunge in local morale for residents and the other business-holders left behind.
To avoid the same in Macclesfield, regeneration and recovery must now act in synchronisation with a radical review of timeframes. All interested partners must work proactively together, bringing forward those elements of the plans that remain valid and innovate where M&S leaves another void. In this scenario, ‘necessity must be the mother of Invention’ and set the pace for change.
So what is Cheshire East Council’s role in this? Well they’ve said it themselves; “The successful delivery of the SRF will require Cheshire East to lead”.
Clearly the pandemic has impacted heavily on the business of CEC, but let’s face it, it has on all businesses!
Covid clearly hasn’t stopped M&S from revising its strategic plans and putting them into rapid operation - and it mustn’t stop Macclesfield.
It’s time for CEC’s Labour-led administration to step up and take a leaf from the M&S business manual, using the £5 million allocated for this purpose. The defection of M&S must not be an excuse for delay but used as the catalyst that ignites Macclesfield’s post-pandemic regeneration - and there is no time to waste.”
Cllr Janet Clowes
Conservative Group Leader
Cheshire East Council
References:
(SRF 2019: Page 8, para 3.2)
