M&S has announced it is closing its Colchester High Street store and moving to Stane Park.

So what do we know about the new store?

It is part of Churchmanor Estates’s 173,000 sq ft Stane Retail Park development in Stanway.

The retail park, about the size of three football pitches, is already home to B&Q, Cook and Aldi which have opened in the last few months.

Bakery chain Greggs is also expected to open a new branch at the retail park.

The Gazette understands building work on the M&S section of the park is due to finish shortly.

Last year it was announced Colchester’s first M&S Foodhall would open in “early 2022” as the third flagship store for the retail development.

The new store will now be expanded to include clothing and homeware departments.

It will also have an M&S café.

The brand says its new store will be larger than the existing shop in the High Street and will stock a bigger range of products.

The £70m Stane Retail Park will be fully completed this month, when M&S will then begin work on their new store which will open later this autumn.

Andrew Icke, Regional Manager for M&S, said: “We’re excited to announce our plans to invest in the local area and open a brand new, larger M&S store at Stane Retail Park, which will offer customers in Colchester a much bigger range of M&S products across our Foodhall and Clothing & Home departments, and a new M&S Café.

"The new store will be finished and open to customers later this autumn.”

There are several other units also being built on site, some of which have been let to undisclosed tenants.

The whole development is expected to create about 300 jobs once complete.