About 20 social centre groupies went to court today dressed in all our wet finery and had a friendly bit of banter with the Tesco legal representative and the judge. The judge decided that, although we pointed out in our defense that their claim wasn't accurate and so should be thrown out, she was happy to quickly amend it in court. This meant that we no longer had a defense as that was the only way our legal assistance had found for rejecting the claim. So, the judge awarded Tesco the possession order, as we thought they might.

We raised the issue of Tesco stating that they didn't want to apply the possession order immediately, they just wanted hold of it. The solicitor again confirmed that this was the case.

SO, net result, as far as we know, we can remain in there doing fun things until Tesco want to get the builders in, hopefully sometime never. Obviously it'd be useful to keep open some kind of dialogue with Tesco about when they're going to move in and we'll look into that,
however the early hope is that we actually have the space for a number of weeks and can get cracking in earnest to make it even more lovely and useful.

The solicitor said in court that "Tesco has no use today for the premises." to which the judge replied "So they are in no position to commence redevelopment at this moment?", and the solicitor answered "No.". So if that's right, and if they do want to wait on the planning
process before trying to evict us, it could be a long long time. Hurrah! :) It also means they were fibbing when they said they could open a store "tomorrow" in the evening news. Cheeky blighters.