Lidl blocks Aldi’s plan for Lincolnshire store

Supermarket operator Lidl has won a High Court case quashing planning permission granted to rival Aldi. Lidl disputed East Lindsey District Council’s decision to grant Aldi planning permission for a new store on the outskirts of Horncastle, Lincolnshire. Lidl’s lawyer argued that the council should have considered a proposal from its client at the same time. According to court papers, in 2022 both Lidl and Aldi applied to the council for planning permission to build a supermarket in Horncastle. Aldi applied seven weeks earlier. Lidl said that, at a meeting in June 2022, the council’s planning officer told representatives of the company that the council intended to consider both applications in the same planning meeting. Lidl made an amendment to its proposal that required further consultation. The result was that it was not ready for the council’s November planning meeting. Even so, the council had its retail impact report ready, so it considered the Aldi proposal and granted Aldi planning permission. This, Lidl said, was an error in law. It argued that the council should have considered both applications side by side. In a ruling handed down today at the planning court in Leeds, Judge Dan Kolinsky agreed, saying that adopting a “first past the post” approach wasn’t appropriate in this situation. “My decision is grounded in the particular circumstances of this case,” he said. “Here, the critical facts are that the evidence identifies the reality that there are two proposals before the authority to address the finite available capacity for a single out-of-centre supermarket without having an adverse impact on Horncastle town centre. “There is also no suggestion that either applicant has behaved in a tactical or contrived way. In this specific context, I consider that it was not lawful to omit a comparative assessment,” he said. He quashed the planning permission granted to Aldi, which means that neither supermarket currently has permission to build a store and must seek planning permission again. Lidl Great Britain Ltd v East Lindsey District Council Planning Court (Dan Kolinsky KC sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court), 2 July 2024