Traders at Shepherd’s Bush Market, who claimed a compulsory purchase order granted ahead of redevelopment did not do enough to protect their livelihoods, have won in their challenge to it at the Court of Appeal.
After handing down judgment on the appeal, Lord Justice Lewison said that the market “would not be compulsorily purchased yet”.
The decision means the secretary of state will have to reconsider his decision to confirm the CPO, potentially delaying the eventual redevelopment
Giving the court’s ruling allowing the appeal by traders following an earlier High Court defeat, he said that the secretary of state had failed to explain why he had disagreed with his inspector that guarantees and safeguards in the CPO for traders were inadequate. The inspector had recommended that the CPO should not be confirmed.
The judge said: “The secretary of state may have had perfectly good reasons for concluding that the guarantees and safeguards were adequate. The problem is that we do not know what they were.”
As a result, traders had been “substantially prejudiced”.
The Shepherd’s Bush Market Tenants Association, spearheaded by chair James Horada, had claimed that the CPO should not have been granted in the absence of greater protections for the unique and diverse character of the market and their livelihoods.
In 2012, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham granted planning permission to Orion Shepherd’s Bush Market to redevelop the site and adjoining land, including refurbishing the market and constructing new buildings of up to nine storeys to provide up to 212 residential units (up to 27,977 sq m) plus more than 14,000 sq m of non-residential floorspace. It then made the CPO confirmed by the secretary of state.
