Wirral Marks & Spencer stores will stay open

Jan 7 2009 By Lorna Hughes

MARKS AND SPENCER

AILING high street giant Marks & Spencer today unveiled its worst sales figures for almost a decade and said it plans to axe up to 1,230 jobs - but its stores in Wirral are safe.

The company - which employs around 70,000 staff in the UK - plans to close 27 stores with the loss of up to 780 jobs. Up to 450 more will go from its head office.

Of the stores to close, 25 are under-performing Simply Food outlets, and two are small main chain stores selling both food and clothes. But M&S’s Simply Food outlet in Heswall and its store in Birkenhead will remain open.

M&S said UK like-for-like sales tumbled 7.1% in the 13 weeks to December 27 - its biggest sales collapse since July-September 1999 - despite heavy price-cutting in the run-up to Christmas.

Union leaders expressed shock at the scale of the job cuts and called for urgent talks with M&S to discuss the redundancies.