MARKS & Spencer confirmed this week it is still coming to Witney, despite store closures and redundancies throughout the country.

Their new store, on two floors, will remain a centrepiece of the £50m Marriotts Close redevelopment, which is still on track to open in September this year.

Simons Developments is pressing ahead with the town centre scheme – one of only three major retail projects under way in the current recession.

Spokesman, Alex Blakelock, told the Gazette: “The current circumstances at M&S in no way relate to our arrangement for the store opening at Marriotts Close. They remain fully committed to the town.”

The retail giant announced this month it was closing 27 outlets and making more than 1,200 staff redundant in the light of falling sales.

Most of those are Simply Food outlets, although two main stores are also for the axe. A simple statement from the company’s head office in London said: “We are indeed still coming to Witney, despite the announcements about other stores. Witney is not affected, and we are still planning for opening in September.”

Rumours began to circulate in the retail sector of the town in the last week that not just M&S, but also other operators signed in to the Marriotts Close development could be pulling out.

But Lesley Semaine, chairman of the town’s Chamber of Commerce, who runs the Royal Oak pub, in High Street, told the Gazette: “I’m afraid rumours do go round at times like this.

“I have frequently had bosses from Simons coming in here for lunch, and there has been no indication from them that anyone is pulling out.

“It’s not been good news lately, with Woolworths closing and uncertainty over Adams children’s shop.

“We are feeling the effects of some of the nationals going under.

“But Witney is attractive, particularly to someone like M&S.

She added: “Where else could they have a store right next to a multi-storey car park, which is free?

“Witney becomes even more attractive when you hear that car parking charges are going up in Oxford.”

Names signed up as commercial tenants are Debenhams, Wallis, Monsoon/Accessorize, Starbucks, Frankie and Bennys, Cafe Rouge, New Look, Dorothy Perkins, and Cineworld, running a 17,500sqft multi-screen cinema.

The Marriotts Close development’s multi-storey will have a car park with 658 spaces, plus an additional 44 surface-level spaces to serve the neighbouring housing development, being built by Linden Homes.

In all, there will be 569 free public parking spaces, says Bill Oddy, West Oxfordshire District Council’s head of community services.

The council leader, Barry Norton, told the Gazette that free public parking remained a committed policy of the ruling Conservative group.

He said: “It will remain so with the present political regime.

“Obviously, I cannot definitively state that it will be so in ten years’ time when there may be other councillors, but for the foreseeable future it is.”

Part of the cost of maintaining and “policing” the free car parks is recouped from ground rents for the new tenants of Marriotts Close, expected to yield about £100,000 a year. The district council still retains the freehold of the land, on which the development is built.