Worcester City Council has me scratching my receding hairline in bewilderment.

If a planning application is thrown out without "good planning grounds" and a developer lodges a successful appeal, the councillors responsible for landing the authority in hot water can be surcharged.

When the Grove Farm Consortium asked permission last month to dig up 12.5 acres near the western bypass, council officers cautioned the technical services committee about the possible fall-out before the proceedings began.

The chairman, Stephen Inman, fretted that an appeal would cost about £50,000 - and members like himself might be asked to stump up.

He and other Conservatives who had promised to defend green fields, reluctantly, allowed the development.

So why didn't the same legal threat hang over the committee when it discussed the three supermarket plans with the developers' agents taking notes just yards away?

Perhaps I wasn't listening intently enough, but I didn't hear the director of corporate services, Philip Betts, intervene when councillors ignored its most senior officers' advice and gave Sainsbury's the thumbs-down.

Surely he might have cooled their heels a little, given the firm's grounds for an inquiry?

Asda decided to appeal immediately after being given the brush-off. It's inconceivable that Sainsbury's will not follow suit if the full council ratifies the technical services committee decision, and I'd be stunned if Safeway let the council off the hook either.

Worcester City Council has an annual budget of about £10m. It ran away when the Grove Farm Consortium stalked into the Guildhall.

Yet the authority, which can barely afford a lick of paint for its 5,200 homes, feels up to a showdown with the likes of Asda owned by Wal-mart, the richest supermarket chain on the planet and which shelled out £6.7bn for the British company in 1999.