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Lidl warned the planning system ‘is stuck in the slow lane’ as it named hundreds of towns where it wants to open stores.
Britain’s sixth-biggest grocer set out a wish list for new locations, including middle class areas from Notting Hill to Harrogate, as it hopes to poach more customers from traditional major supermarkets.
But Richard Taylor, Lidl’s UK chief real estate officer, said a ‘lack of consistency’ across local planning authorities has delayed store openings.
In 2021, the budget supermarket had 880 stores and set out to have 1,100 in the UK by the end of last year.
It has since managed to open hundreds but only has around 1,010 shops.
‘Our ambition is limitless, but to keep investing, we need a planning system that encourages quality development rather than frustrating it,’ Taylor said.
Planning hold-up: Lidl has set out a wish list for new store locations, including Middle Class areas from Notting Hill in London to Harrogate in Yorkshire
He said businesses such as Lidl need planning officers ‘to have the resources and expertise to process applications efficiently’.
He added: ‘We have the ambition, but the planning system is stuck in the slow lane.’
The comments to The Daily Telegraph came as Lidl targets more than 1,000 areas for potential store openings.
This includes more shops in London, such as Barnes, Kensington and Chelsea and Dagenham, as well as cities such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham, Swansea and Cardiff.
Jonathan De Mello, the founder of JDM Retail, said the latest wish list shows that a ‘middle-class migration’ to discount supermarkets is ‘no longer a temporary trend’.
He added: ‘Lidl’s willingness to go head-to-head with Waitrose and M&S on their own turf shows they are no longer content with being an alternative – they want to be the primary destination.’
Lidl opened around 40 shops in 2025 and plans to have 50 more by the end of this year.
It holds 8.3 per cent of the grocery market, according to the most recent data from market researchers at Worldpanel by Numerator, which was published at the end of last month.
This is compared with 7.8 per cent at the same time last year.
Taylor said the retailer was ‘yet to see the benefit’ of Labour announcing £48million to boost capacity in the planning system, including by hiring hundreds of extra officers across the country.
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