But what kind of a legacy has he left? In the search for a new chief executive, Sainsbury's headhunters tried long and hard to attract one of Tesco's up and coming young turks. With Sir Terry Leahy showing no sign of wanting to hang up his boots, you might have thought they would have been queuing down the aisles for the chance of the top job somewhere else There's no mystery as to why they weren't. Most executives in the supermarkets sector regard Sainsbury's as mission impossible.The awful truth is that Sir Peter's reign has failed to improve matters. Insiders say that the spanking new distribution system, installed by Sir Peter at vast expense as a cornerstone of his turnaraound strategy, is failing by a big margin to deliver the productivity gains planned for, while my own little vignette demonstrates just how far it's got to go in improving poor levels of availability. The decision to outsource IT to Accenture was an expensive mistake, while the posh new, glass fronted headquarters in central London look a ludicrous extravagance set alongside the unsalubrious out of town sheds that house the company's more successful competitors.There's no apparent solution to the now yawning 7 per cent price gap that separates Sainsbury from Tesco.

This was very much Sir Peter's fault, as he had a finder's fee riding on securing a successor. It would have been easy for the non-executives to have made Sir Peter pay for his misjudgement with his job. The humiliation was deeply felt by all when the luckless Sir Ian was appointed only to be unappointed a few days later after the City screamed blue murder. But the board did nothing, preferring an easy life to the fallout of a public execution.Sir Peter is said to be keen to go as soon as a credible successor can be bedded in Few in the City think he'll see out his contract. Even after establishing the supposed location for what I was looking for, the store was repeatedly either out of stock or the line had been discontinued. Frustrated, I eventually abandoned the trolley and drove to the nearest Tesco's.The time for the non-executives to have acted was the fiasco of Sir Ian Prosser's appointment as chairman in waiting.

There was no rhyme or reason to the way the shelves were stacked, with non-foods crammed in alongside the baked beans in a manner fit for bedlam. As he's repeatedly said, the company was in a shockingly run-down condition when he rejoined as chief executive four years ago. Yet shareholders were entitled to expect more.For me, the scales finally fell from my eyes on a recent visit to what had once been one of Sainsbury's flagship London stores. I've been kinder on Sir Peter than I perhaps should have over the years. Well, he has got an expensive new yacht and country house to pay for, hasn't he. For that, Justin King, Sir Peter's successor as chief executive, can call on Sir Peter's "advice" full time.