Warwick Lidl Vote Pulled: Tesco Points to Leamington Site

Updated 24 September 2026. There was no vote. Lidl’s Heathcote Lane store was withdrawn from the agenda before Warwick District Council’s planning committee met on 16 September. The council’s own summary of the meeting gives the reason in one line: the item was withdrawn “to enable further clarity to be sought in relation to Sequential Test.” No new date has been published, and the next scheduled committee is 13 October.

The rest of this article is the preview we published on 14 September and is unchanged. The section immediately below explains what the sequential test row is about, because our preview did not cover it.

The objection that stopped it: Tesco and a Leamington car park

The objector is Tesco Stores Limited, working through Martin Robeson Planning Practice, which wrote to the council on 26 September 2025, 2 September 2026 and 11 September 2026. Its argument is not about the shopfront or the car park layout. It is about whether Lidl has properly tested a site closer to a town centre first.

Planning policy makes developers apply a sequential test: town centre sites first, then edge-of-centre, then out-of-centre. The site Tesco says was not properly tested is Covent Garden Car Park in Leamington town centre, which its planners describe as an edge-of-centre site of about 0.55 hectares.

Lidl discounted it. Its stated minimum site requirement is 0.6 hectares, and it also says the site is not being actively marketed, so it is neither suitable nor available.

Tesco’s planners say that gap is not a significant difference, and that a developer’s own preferred store format cannot by itself rule out an edge-of-centre site. They cite the High Court decision in Aldergate Properties v Mansfield DC [2016] EWHC 1670 (Admin) on how suitability is judged. Their 11 September letter also notes that the council’s own retail consultant, Lambert Smith Hampton, accepted the site “is smaller than retailers would generally prefer” for a store of this scale and “may not be ‘suitable’ for grocery operators”.

Lidl’s agent, Rapleys, replied twice in the week of the meeting, on 15 and 16 September, and says Tesco’s 11 September letter did not reach it until shortly before the committee. Its position is that the employment land has been found surplus to requirements and the occupier is relocating.

There is a local twist in the site Tesco has pointed at. The Covent Garden multi-storey car park in Leamington reopened on 1 July 2026, two floors of it, after being shut since February 2023. The council announced it as “just over an additional 100 car parking spaces in Leamington town centre”.

A further objection from a Whitnash resident was registered on the application on 21 September, five days after the item was pulled.

The preview we published on 14 September follows.

Warwick District Council’s planning officers had recommended that councillors approve a Lidl supermarket on Heathcote Lane in Warwick, sixteen months after the application was submitted. The Planning Committee was due to vote on Wednesday 16 September.

The site is Europa House, CV34 6SP, on the roundabout where the A452 meets Heathcote Lane. It sits between the two towns: the officer’s report calls it a gateway site south west of Warwick and south east of Royal Leamington Spa, inside the urban area boundary but outside both town centres.

The application is at committee because of the number of objections received and because Warwick Town Council objected.

What is being proposed

Lidl Great Britain Ltd applied in May 2025 to demolish Europa House and build a discount foodstore with parking and landscaping. Permission to demolish the building was granted separately under prior approval in March 2026, so the demolition is no longer in question.

The store itself would be:

• a single building with a monopitch roof, about 7 metres at the ridge and 4.9 metres at the canopy
• finished in two-tone silver and white composite cladding, with double-height glazing on the western edge
• entered from the south, with the car park between the building and Heathcote Lane
• capped at 2,185 sq m gross internal area and 1,516 sq m of net sales area, of which no more than 80% may be food and no more than 20% non-food

Those floor space caps are not Lidl’s offer. They are condition 30, imposed because the council’s retail consultant assessed the impact on Leamington and Warwick town centres on the basis of a store that size and no larger.

The car park is 33 spaces short

The council’s own Parking Standards document requires one space per 14 sq m for a store of this type. That works out at 156 car parking spaces. The layout now in front of councillors provides 123, including 6 disabled bays, 9 parent and child bays and 5 motorcycle spaces. That is a shortfall of 33.

Officers accept it. The standards allow a lower provision where a development is accessible by other means or generates less parking than the formula assumes, and Lidl submitted evidence from comparable stores. Two new bus stops on Heathcote Lane and a new toucan crossing are offered as part of the package.

Warwick Town Council is not persuaded. Its objection in May 2026 makes three points:

• the electric vehicle charging provision has not changed, and it questions whether the points are sufficient or accessible
• parking spaces have been reduced by 8, not increased
• the pedestrian route into the store is not the most direct, requires navigating opening doors, and the accessible path may not be wide enough

In its earlier comments the town council said the disabled bay provision was 4% rather than the recommended 10%, that electric vehicle charging at 5% was not enough, and that there is no separate delivery access, with everything using one entrance.

What the objectors say

Eight third-party objections were received, including one from The Leamington Society. The grounds listed in the report are:

• converting business premises to retail, and the loss of employment land
• traffic impacts and highway safety, including the altered access
• inadequate cycle provision and poor pedestrian and public transport links, leaving customers reliant on cars
• loss of privacy and noise for neighbours from extra traffic and footfall
• the sequential test, and diverting footfall from the town centre to an out-of-centre site
• the removal of large mature trees
• the visual impact of a car park facing the road and a blank southern elevation, on a building the objectors say has architectural merit

On trees, the report says the mature planting along the road frontages is largely retained and 15 new trees are proposed along the southern and western frontages. The council’s tree officer had objected earlier; the report records that objection as resolved.

The employment land argument

This was the hard part of the case, and the report does not hide it.

Warwick District Local Plan policy EC3 protects employment land outside town centres. Officers state plainly that the proposal does not meet parts c), d) or e) of that policy. It relies instead on parts a) and b): that there is an adequate supply of other employment sites, and that continued employment use would not be viable.

The evidence Lidl put forward:

• Europa House was built out for Wanzl, its former occupier, and around 40% of it is office space, which the applicant says is well above what the market wants
• marketing began in October 2023, while the site was still occupied, and continued until early 2026 across several platforms
• the only interested party in that time was Lidl, and Wanzl relocated off site
• council monitoring data to March 2026 shows 126 vacant industrial units and more than 250 vacant Use Class E(g) properties in the Warwick area

The council’s own planning policy team was initially unconvinced. Its January 2026 response recorded reservations about losing a site in such a prime location, with good links to the strategic road network and to the labour market of south Leamington. After a further technical note it accepted, in May 2026, that the policy test had been met.

The conditions

The recommendation carries 32 conditions and a section 106 agreement. The ones a neighbour or a shopper would notice:

Warwickshire County Council’s highways team has asked for £48,300 through the section 106 agreement to provide the two bus stops on Heathcote Lane. Officers call that reasonable for the scale of the development.

There is a deadline built into the recommendation. If the legal agreement is not completed within three months of the committee, or officers judge that not enough progress has been made, the recommendation is that permission be refused.

What it means for you

The committee was due to meet at 6pm on Wednesday 16 September at the Town Hall in Royal Leamington Spa. Meetings are open to the public and are livestreamed on the council’s YouTube channel.

If you want to speak, the deadline to register is 10am on Tuesday 15 September, the working day before the meeting. Applicants, agents, supporters, objectors, a representative of the relevant town or parish council and the district’s Conservation Advisory Forum can all speak, within time limits set out in the council’s procedure rules. District councillors can address the committee on applications in their ward.

A committee is not obliged to follow its officers. It can refuse, or defer, or approve with different conditions, and the report is a recommendation rather than a decision.

Nothing changes on the ground this week either way. Even with permission, the store cannot open until the toucan crossing is built, and the section 106 agreement has to be signed first.

The application is W/25/0728 on the council’s planning register, where the drawings, the retail assessment and the employment land technical note can all be read. We track decisions across the district on our Leamington planning news page, and the town centre car park tariffs that this store’s free parking would compete with are on our parking in Leamington page.

The numbers in front of the committee

Sources

• Warwick District Council Planning Committee, meeting of 16 September 2026, for the agenda, the item order and the published reports.
• Officer’s report on application W/25/0728, Item 5, Planning Committee 16 September 2026, for the recommendation, the site description, the representations, the parking figures, the employment land assessment, the section 106 request and all 32 conditions. Published as part of the agenda at the link above.
• Summary of Decisions, Planning Committee 16 September 2026, and the committee’s update report of the same date, both published by Warwick District Council on the application’s documents tab, for the withdrawal of the item and its stated reason. The council states on the face of the summary that it is not the formal minutes.
• Martin Robeson Planning Practice objections on behalf of Tesco Stores Limited, dated 2 September 2026 and 11 September 2026, on the application’s documents tab, for the 0.55 hectare size and edge-of-centre description of Covent Garden Car Park, Lidl’s 0.6 hectare minimum, the Aldergate Properties v Mansfield DC citation, and the quoted Lambert Smith Hampton findings. The letters record earlier representations dated 26 September 2025.
• Rapleys LLP letters on behalf of Lidl Great Britain Limited dated 15 and 16 September 2026, on the same documents tab, for the applicant’s response and the surplus employment land position.
• Covent Garden multi-storey car park set to reopen next week, Warwick District Council, 26 June 2026 for the 1 July 2026 reopening date, the two floors and the “just over an additional 100 car parking spaces” figure, and the February 2023 closure.
• Warwick District Council Planning Committee meeting dates, checked 24 September 2026, for the 13 October 2026 meeting.
• Application W/25/0728 on Warwick District Council’s planning register, for the application documents.
• Planning Committee, Warwick District Council, for the meeting venue, the livestream, the right to speak and the 10am deadline on the working day before the meeting.