CMA Moves to Bring Aldi and Lidl Under Major Supermarket Land Rules

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally ruled that Aldi and Lidl should now be classified as Large Grocery Retailers, a decision that would bring both discounters under the same land-use restrictions already governing Britain's biggest supermarket chains.

The finding would extend the Groceries Market Investigation (Controlled Land) Order 2010 to Aldi and Lidl for the first time. The order was designed to stop major grocers from using restrictive covenants or exclusivity arrangements to block rival supermarkets from opening nearby sites. It currently applies to Asda, Co-op, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose. When the regime was introduced in 2010, Aldi and Lidl were excluded on the grounds that they operated as limited assortment discounters — a classification the CMA now says no longer fits.

The regulator's provisional view rests on three factors: the scale and geographic reach of the two chains' store networks, the breadth of their grocery ranges, and their direct purchasing arrangements with suppliers through integrated wholesaling operations. Aldi and Lidl now both rank among the top five retailers by market share in the UK's food and grocery market, estimated at £215 billion.

Under the CMA's proposed criteria, any Aldi or Lidl store exceeding 1,000 square metres of shopfloor space across Great Britain or Northern Ireland would fall within scope, on the basis that these larger formats now carry what the CMA considers a full grocery range — even where certain categories remain narrower than at traditional supermarkets.

Juliette Enser, the CMA's executive director of competition enforcement and markets, framed the move as a levelling of the retail landscape: "We want everyone to have the best choice of supermarket and range of prices when buying their groceries." She added: "This is about allowing shoppers to choose where they spend their money and levelling the playing field for all major supermarkets."

The CMA is now inviting responses from stakeholders on its provisional findings, with a deadline of 5pm on Monday, 7 September 2026. A final decision is expected in the autumn.