Marks & Spencer to axe 350 store management roles

The high street stalwart has launched a consultation with affected staff following a review of its shop staffing teams, which found inconsistent management structures across similar stores, as well as a number of overlapping management roles.

According to documents seen by The Guardian, Marks & Spencer’s store management costs have risen over the past two years, despite the business suffering a steep drop off in store sales over that period.

The documents said the rising costs had “contributed to reducing store profitability, impacting on our ability to trade our existing stores and open future stores viably”.

M&S is planning to make 351 redundancies across a range of roles as a result.

A total of 115 stores, commercial and operations managers will be made redundant, while 182 section manager and 54 visual manager roles will also be stripped out.

Details emerged less than a week after M&S warned shareholders at its AGM that its move to shut 100 stores would not be the end of its restructuring plans.

CEO Steve Rowe told investors there were “likely to be more redundancies” as the retailer continues its efforts to adapt to a multichannel future.

Other big-name retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have made similar changes to the way their stores are managed as they face rising costs in the form of business rates and increases in the national living wage.

An M&S spokeswoman said: “M&S is transforming and this is a tough but necessary decision to take to ensure our stores support the future of the business and provide the best service for our customers.”