Dave,
As I'm sure you know there are sixty - three Councillors in Stockport. Most of them couldn't care less about CAMSFC. Most of them couldn't care less about Asda. With the exception perhaps of 8/10 of them, they couldn't care less about Marple. What they do care about are their political aims and games.
I'm not saying what they'll do. All I'm saying saying is that there is no point in quoting the Council's LDF, that won't stop ASDA, that won't stop anything especially if it becomes a political issue. Go to any Council chamber and you'll see party politics at work.
At the time of writing , the Planning Committee consists of 11 Councillors: 6 Libdems, 2 Labour and 3 Conservative. One of the Libdems is our own Councillor Kev, the Libdems will probably let him lead on it because of his local political knowledge and they'll always support their own. Whereas the other parties will very often go against the Libdems - for no other reason than it is the LibDems.
If the Committee sat tonight and Councillor Kev was opposed to the ASDA ( I dont know that this is true ) then the application would almost certainly be rejected - but come the election the Committee will have a different political make-up and if Councillor Kev is opposed to it then - they might be opposed to him - only this time they'll have the majority. Then you could have planning consent by September.