Retailer Marks and Spencer have submitted plans to open a second store in Bath, at the Weston Lock retail park on the Lower Bristol Road.
The planning application has been submitted to Bath and North East Somerset Council for Marks & Spencer to occupy half of the site currently occupied by Currys and PC World as a ‘Simply Food’ store.
The Simply Food format is a specialist chain of small and medium sized foodstores selling predominantly a range of M&S branded products, as well as other items including flowers, plants, stationery and cards.
Marks & Spencer already has an established store selling a range of non-food and food goods in Bath’s city centre.
M&S extended the store in May 2010, adding over 1200 sqm of floorspace and later modernised the whole store in late 2012.
In total M&S has invested over £7 million in the Bath store since 2010. The store has a sales floorspace about 12 times as large as the Simply Food proposal and the food hall in the centre store is about 75% larger than the proposed food sales area at Weston Lock.
The retailer has been looking for an opportunity to open a Simply Food store in Bath to complement the city centre store for about 10 years.
M&S estimate that the store will provide about 60-65 jobs in a mixture of full and part time positions, many of which will be recruited in the local area.
By the end of 2013 Marks & Spencer had 183 Simply Food stores operating across the country.