Welwyn Garden City’s Marks & Spencer store will be closing down later this year, the retailer has confirmed.

The store in The Howard Centre will be shutting its doors for good in April, with M&S regional manager Jon Statham saying: “Shopping habits are changing, so we’re rotating our store estate to make sure we have the right stores to offer our customers a brilliant shopping experience.

“As part of this transformation, we have today announced to colleagues that we will be closing the M&S Welwyn Garden City store in April 2022.”

He also confirmed that the closure is unlikely to lead to any redundancies, with staff being relocated to nearby stores.

“Our priority now is to talk to our colleagues about what this announcement means for them,” said Jon.

“We have reassured colleagues that they will all be redeployed into a role in a nearby M&S store and we do not anticipate any redundancies.

“We appreciate that this will be disappointing news for some and we would like to thank all our customers who have shopped with us in the store.

“We will be working hard to keep serving them in our many stores in the wider local area which offer a wide range of food, clothing and home products, including St Albans, London Colney and our upcoming new store in Stevenage which will open later this spring.”