This is what the new giant Lidl store will look like on Milton Keynes estate

Work has this week started to demolishing a row of shops in an estate’s local centre to make way for a giant Lidl supermarket.

Four other existing stores on Oldbrook have been fenced off by contractors ready to be bulldozed after Lidl acquired a chunk of the centre.

One of the doomed buildings is a Tesco Express, whose bosses objected in vain to their rival literally crushing the competition.

There has been a smaller Lidl store for years on the site but the new building will be on the other side and much larger, boasting 128 car parking spaces.

Council documents show an artists impression of the spacious new supermarket, which will also be more modern and in line with Lidl’s latest specification.

Lidl bosses say in their planning statement: "The existing Lidl store is trading very well but is now dated and inefficient, having been one of the earliest stores to have been constructed in the UK. The store has undergone two extensions over the past 15 years, but it is operating over capacity and there is no opportunity for any further expansion of the existing building.”

They were granted planning permission by Milton Keynes City Council for the new store in April 2021. But three months later the council was forced to quash this consent after Tesco took them to judicial review. This meant the council had to consider the planning application again from scratch.

Tesco chiefs were unhappy at the loss of their store and fought for it to remain, saying: “Tesco has operated an Express store within the northern part of the Oldbrook Local Centre since 2003. It has existed alongside a Lidl supermarket, each offering distinctly different yet complementary facilities and thus providing shopping choice."

MK City Council re-considered Lidl’s application in July 2022 and once again granted it. The council officer’s report stated at the time: "The proposed development is considered to provide an improved replacement retail provision compared to existing provision within an established local centre.”

The Lidl plans "do not compromise" the local centre’s viability, said the report.