​M&S is to add self checkouts to changing rooms across its 180 clothing stores to speed up the overall process and make checking out smoother.

The retail giant, which has boosted its fashion credentials dramatically over the last few years, said its aim is to have the new technology implemented across more than 100 stores by early 2028, the Telegraph newspaper first reported.

Sites where self checkouts are already in operation include Fosse Park, Leicester, one of the retailer’s flagship stores, and the technology will be installed across its whole clothing estate once it’s completed a wider store revamp, it noted.

M&S operations director Sacha Berendji said: “We’d like customers to be able to walk straight into the fitting room with no queue, try on what they’ve chosen, then pay there and just walk out.”

Berendji said the retailer was currently installing one self checkout per changing room area, and would be adding more based on demand from shoppers.

The checkouts have already been installed across 28 of the retailer’s recently refurbished sites.

And after M&S chairman Archie Norman’s warning that shoplifting was “creeping in” among middle-class shoppers due to self checkouts failing to scan products, Berendji also said the retailer would have staff members “hosting” changing room areas to ensure shoppers paid for their items.

He said: “Shoplifting is a major problem in this country, but there are things that we’re all doing to make sure we can mitigate some of those losses.

“This is all about choice. If you want to be served by a colleague, that’s absolutely OK and you always can be. But if people want to serve themselves, they can do that instead.”

The changes come under a wider revamp of M&S’s larger stores, including its home, food and clothing ranges.