A PUBLIC inquiry which could determine the future of Shepherd’s Bush Market begins next week, with developers insisting their plans will ensure the historic shopping arcade will thrive for the next 100 years.

Thirteen shop owners in Goldhawk Road are off to Hammersmith Town Hall on Tuesday to challenge the Compulsory Purchase Orders put on their businesses by Orion, which needs to knock down their buildings to regenerate the market.

Should their challenge succeed, it could put the controversial scheme, which includes 200 new flats, in doubt. However, Orion said it is confident the case will be thrown out, and vowed its plans will improve the area and make the market one of the most thriving in London.

Orion, which has teamed up with Wellington Market Company, the firm behind the Spitalfields Market redevelopment, insists existing traders will be at the heart of the redevelopment and pledged to keep it wholly independent and free from big chains.

Project director Chris Horn said: “No one wants to change the essence of Shepherd’s Bush Market – we have got no interest in bringing in a load of chains and forcing away the traders, far from it – you can go to Westfield for that.

“This place will always be about the ethnic food, the cloth stalls and the arches.

“But the site has been in decline and we want to make this a market to be proud of. It has been going for 100 years and we believe this is a plan to ensure it’s around for the next 100.”

The firm says it wants up to 60 new traders to create a ‘wider appeal’ for shoppers but says it won’t try to ‘create new lines of competition’ for existing stallholders, but ‘greater choice for customers’.

It wants to introduce different types of tenancy agreements, from pop-ups to long-term leases, and aims to create different zones of stalls within what would be a larger market with seating areas. Eventually it hopes to attract at least 60,000 people every weekend.

The firm says the market would not be closed at any point during the development, expected to take about a year, and that traders will be moved to temporary cargo container stalls – similar to Box Park in Shoreditch – by Pennard Road while work is carried out.

But James Horada, chairman of the market traders’ association, said the disruption could destroy some businesses and blasted Orion for not offering rent reductions during the work.

He said the firm was ‘really just interested in maximising revenue from the new flats’.

"Our traders are just being told to grin and bear it while there are no guarantees they will survive,” he said. "There is no safety net and, in reality, the changes are mainly about profit from housing.”

The Goldhawk Road traders say they will lose their freeholds if and when they are moved and are not being offered like-for-like terms.

The public inquiry is expected to last two weeks.