The site of the former Kwik Save supermarket in Ilkley is to reopen as a Marks & Spencer in the new year.

The store at Station Plaza, pictured, shut earlier this year, with only 24 hours notice, as part of a 79 closures across the country.

Now the site, unoccupied since May, is to be reborn as a Marks & Spencer Simply Food store. Details on how many workers the store will employ are not finalised.

Rumours that M&S was to move into the former Kwik Save unit had been circulating for a few weeks and were confirmed by the retail giant yesterday.

A spokesman said: "We can now confirm that contracts have been signed on the Station Road site.

"It brings something back that has been lost and is great news for Ilkley."

Speculation has been mounting for months that M&S was in line to take over the unit, the largest in the Station Plaza complex. Tiger Developments said earlier in the year that it was in talks with a "good quality food retailer" but stopped short of naming the firm.

Bradford Council planning officer Martyn Burke said the unit is limited to being used for retail under existing planning permission. It has been a retail unit since Station Plaza was converted in the early 1980s.

The store, not far from Ilkley Station, will serve food only and is set to open in April 2008.

The old Kwik Save unit is to be extensively refurbished by M&S, which has signed a deal with the plaza's owners Tiger Developments and follows the recent openings of outlets for national chains Laura Ashley and Pizza Express there.

Kwik Save closed in May with the loss of 15 jobs after periods of "stock issues" left shelves in the supermarket empty and a potential deal for pub and restaurant chain JD Weatherspoon to take it over collapsed.

The news comes in the same week in which M&S opened a Simply Food outlet in Skipton, employing 80 staff and which bosses expect to make £6 million a year.

It is a further boost to the chain's profile in the district as it has extensive plans to open a multi-million pound distribution centre in Bradford, which it estimates will provide work for about 2,500 people.