Staff and customers of Marks & Spencer in Chester city centre can breathe a sigh of relief it is not on the closure list...at the moment.

M&S today announced the next tranche of UK stores to go in a radical restructure that aims to take at least a third of sales online.

Fortunately, the Foregate Street outlet is not among the further 14 store closures revealed - nor is the flagship store at Cheshire Oaks in Ellesmere Port.

However, M&S says more than 100 stores will shut in total by 2022 including 21 that have already closed – meaning many more stores remain in jeopardy.

In addition, 15 fewer owned Simply Food stores will now open this year as the food opening programme is scaled back

Alongside relocations, conversions, downsizes and the introduction of concessions, M&S says the closures will radically reshape M&S’s ‘Clothing and Home’ space.

Marks and Spencer store at Cheshire Oaks

Sacha Berendji, retail, operations and property director at Marks & Spencer, said: “We are making good progress with our plans to reshape our store estate to be more relevant to our customers and support our online growth plans. Closing stores isn’t easy but it is vital for the future of M&S.

"Where we have closed stores, we are seeing an encouraging number of customers moving to nearby stores and enjoying shopping with us in a better environment, which is why we’re continuing to transform our estate with pace.”

The acceleration of M&S’s UK store estate programme is part of M&S’s wider five-year transformation plan ‘to make M&S special again’.