There will always be a clash between those who want to build stuff and those living next door.

And that tension is amplified by supermarkets, visited by millions of us every week... yet no one wants them on their doorstep.

A few years ago it was the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda swallowing industrial-sized plots for their out-of-town hyper markets, complete with petrol stations and cafes, or land-banking sites to block competitors from gaining a foothold.

BirminghamLive previously reported the battle between Tesco and Co-op, which spent more than a decade locked in legal battles over the right to build in Stirchley.

A similar amount of legal energy was expended as a store war raged between Asda and Tesco over rival plans for Bristol Street on the edge of the city centre.

But all this was to no avail as Tesco, just as it triumphed in both cases, revised its business plan and dropped the vast majority of its out-of-town superstores.

Now the market has shifted in the last decade thanks to the disrupters... the German discount giants Aldi and Lidl.

The proposed Aldi in Great Barr
The proposed Aldi in Great Barr

Fewer people were willing to drive long distances to spend two hours marching up and down 40 aisles while agonising over the choice between 16 different brands of baked beans.

Home delivery has also become very affordable.The discounters succeeded not only through cheap prices, but by simplifying the affair with smaller stores of five or six aisles.

Being smaller they can be sited in existing high streets and shopping areas, closer to homes.

But after years of being the plucky upstarts, their growth has reached the stage where they may no longer be as welcome as once they were.Now they are at war with the communities who once battled the likes of Tesco and Sainsburys.

Towards the end 2016, it was Stirchley, which once again found itself at the centre of a superstore war.

Lidl had settled on a site in Pershore Road which was occupied by two thriving businesses, a bowling alley and a gym.

The planning process had more twists than a murder mystery novel as the application went backwards and forwards, at first informally rejected by the city’s planning committee, then approved after legal advice and then again rejected went it was realised that councillors were allowed to protect leisure businesses.

Protests against Lidl store in Stirchley

So as long as the two businesses were there Lidl’s store could not be built . It should therefore have come as little surprise that the businesses were given notice by the land owner and evicted, clearing the path.

It was a brutal execution.

Creative minds on the planning committee tried to steer Lidl towards the now vacant Tesco site, but to no avail.

At the start of last year Aldi similarly sought planning permission for a new store in Great Barr. Residents were stumped as to why it would want to build next to a giant Asda and just a mile from an existing and expanding Aldi at the Scott Arms junction.

They must, however, see a market for it as the firm would not invest if they did not think it was viable.

Sceptics only need look at the example of the Beggars Bush junction on the edge of Sutton Coldfield where Tesco, Lidl and Aldi have busy stores a stone’s throw from each other.

Nonetheless, the case against the Great Barr Aldi was overwhelming – one of the most cut and dried seen at Birmingham’s planning committee.

They had no option but to refuse.There were four substantial grounds: the loss of green space on the edge of the Queslett Nature Reserve, the loss of 60 mature trees, and the impact on traffic at the already congested Old Horns Roundabout.

Planning officers also thought the store was pointing the wrong way, presenting a dull back wall to the main road.

A brief rejig of the design and some more landscaping did little to alter the planning department’s view that this would be a disaster.

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So determined was Aldi that it lodged an appeal against the council which will be heard by a Government planning inspector on May 1, with a decision due later this year.

It seems the store will not take no for an answer and has been very busy chipping away at the case - details of which emerged in papers for this week’s planning committee meeting.

The offer of £145,000 compensation for the loss of green space and some investment in pedestrian crossings and road signs have weakened two of the four reasons to refuse to the point where council lawyers think they can no longer defend them.

How long before the other reasons are also tackled? Last year the council itself ordered the chopping down of a decades-old London Plane Tree in Centenary Square, arguing it was planting scores of saplings nearby.

So all Aldi needs to do is take a trip to the garden centre and find somewhere nearby to plant a few dozen trees. Whereas the big four supermarkets are retreating from new store development , Aldi and Lidl are accelerating with a ruthless determination.