Councillors are set to give the green light to pull down Stafford's former Wilko and Shopmobility this week – but public toilets on the site will be retained for as long as possible, a meeting has heard.

Approval to demolish the Broad Street buildings has been recommended by council officers ahead of a planning committee on Wednesday (8 July).

The proposal has sparked concerns about future toilet provision.

Cllr Frank James, speaking at a scrutiny committee meeting on Thursday (2 July), said: "I keep being asked where they are taking out the public toilets, are they going to put one back in?"

Michelle Smith, the council's economic growth and strategic partnership manager, said: "If we get planning permission to pull down the buildings on site we have already spoken to our contractors.

"Firstly it is technically possible to pull down the empty former Shopmobility building without harming the toilets.

"There's also no immediate need for us to demolish the toilets.

"They're still safe to use, they can still be accessed, so the toilets will come absolutely last.

"What we don't know yet is, when we get to the point we need to pull them down, how long it will then be before we can re-provide as part of any developments.

"We can't specify exact times – what we can commit to is we won't pull them down until we absolutely have to."

Another demolition application has also been submitted in recent weeks for two retail units in Crabbery Street, which are part of the former Guildhall Shopping Centre site earmarked for redevelopment.

Members of the council's Economic Development and Planning Scrutiny Committee were given an update on the ambitious town centre redevelopment project at Thursday's meeting.

Ms Smith said: "We have completed all of our strategic land assembly work, we have completed in the main demolition works at the former Guildhall and Co-op sites and we are imminently, subject to planning permission, starting demolition on the former Wilko site, 10-12 Gaolgate Street and there's some residual works off Crabbery Street that are within the Guildhall site, where there was a brow bar and another little shop just behind the arch.

"The piece of work we need to complete before we can go out to do our developer selection process is have a document that sets out, with a mix of high-level data and also some images, the look and scale of development we want to see coming into the town centre.

"The market hall is earmarked for the rear of the Guildhall Shopping Centre.

"We're looking at not just a market hall, but an indoor market 'plus' – you may hear it referred to as a '21st century market hall'.

"It's not a replacement of a traditional market hall, it's looking at how we can get food and beverage uses in and how we can have something other than strictly short-term retail uses.

"Then we have three residential and mixed-use parcels of land, which is the area that used to be the multistorey car park, the area that was the indoor market hall and, moving down Earl Street, where the old management suite, gym and little service car park were to the rear of the Guildhall, and then the old Co-op site.

"This isn't about taking out lots of commercial use in the town and filling it up with housing, it's about how we have commercial uses that might be independent retail or other commercial uses but with residential above, to create that critical mass of people in the town centre.

"We've got the site at Broad Street earmarked for education, which hopefully will be the college.

"Finally we are recognising that in amongst all this, there is a reasonable amount of public realm space that needs to be thought out carefully.

"What we don't want is a mishmash of different stuff because we've got different parcels of land.

"When we are moving to the developer selection process, one of the questions we will be posing is how are we going to do that and make sure it doesn't look like a patchwork quilt."