Tesco went on the offensive this week, lashing out at its biggest rivals in its latest submission to the Competition Commission's groceries inquiry.

In a thinly veiled attack on Asda, which called for reform of the planning regime in its own submission last month, it slammed "one operator's" call for planning authorities to carry out a 'competition test' that would favour new entrants into a local market.

Asda called for this test to replace the existing quantitative needs test, which authorities use to decide if an area requires further grocery retail space.

But Tesco said: "The effect would be to provide operators that are less efficient and popular with customers with a 'helping hand' to open stores, by preventing more efficient operators from opening stores in areas where they are already present."

Tesco said it supported the abolition of the needs test - but only because of the cost and time it accrued. Asda declined to comment.

Tesco claimed its success in land procurement had prompted competitors to review their land acquisition strategies.

It said Asda "had taken its eye off the ball" and Sainsbury's had "neglected its land pipeline". Tesco also criticised the Commission's plans to look at the UK's grocery market on a local level, arguing that the grocery market was national.

Tesco said the Commission would be wrong to use a 10-15 minute drive time to define a local market because it failed to take into account the behaviour of marginal customers willing to shop elsewhere. It should instead look at the market within a 30-minute drive of a store.

Tesco claimed that using this measure, customers at 90% of its stores above 14,000 sq ft would have a choice of 23 other grocery stores - six times more than required for a local market to be deemed competitive

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