The Times

The Competition Commission has delayed publication of its groceries inquiry by three months until February next year.

The watchdog said the delay was caused by ‘no single factor’, but it wanted to “ensure a fair and thorough process and allow parties enough time to respond to all the evidence and analysis that we are continuing to gather”.

Among the issues under investigation is whether supermarkets are ‘land banking’ undeveloped land.

Last week Tesco published its own research that sought to remonstrate that a store’s local market embraced customers up to a 30-minute drive away and it argued that shoppers on the edge of a supermarket’s locality, widely accepted as 15 minutes’ drive from a store, would be prepared to drive in the opposite direction for 10 to 15 minutes.