In this article, James Findlay QC looks at the UK Supreme Court case of Tesco Stores Ltd v Dundee City Council which involved a challenge to the grant of planning permission for a competing retailer (Asda) to build a new supermarket near one of Tesco's existing supermarkets. The issue at the heart of the appeal was whether the planning officer had misinterpreted the sequential test. The challenge, as is well known, was rejected holding that the officer (perhaps somewhat to his surprise) had interpreted the policy correctly. This article originally appeared in issue 165 of SPEL Magazine (October, 2014) and is reproduced here with their kind permission.