PLANS are to be drawn up to redesign a Teesside market after it came in for criticism.

Consultants Drivers Jonas hired by Stockton Borough Council last year dubbed the town's market as tatty.

Now Stockton Pedestrians Group said the market is badly-designed and questioned its safety for pedestrians.

Councillor Bob Cook, cabinet member for regeneration and a leading member of Stockton's Market Forum committee, has revealed that the council has asked its architects to look at ways that the market could be redesigned.

He said: "We are going to flatten the old toilets on the High Street, which will give us a little bit of space and give us a chance to look at design.

"When the town was pedestrianised in the early 1990s we set the stalls as best we could in the space we had, but now we can look at that again."

Ron Atkinson, chairman of the Stockton Pedestrians Group, said that one stall, near Littlewoods and Marks and Spencer on the High Street, was too close to the road, sometimes forcing people in wheelchairs and with prams on to the road.

The pedestrians group first contacted the council about the issue two years ago and were planning to complain to the local government ombudsman.

Mr Atkinson also said the council had not given the pedestrians group proper access to the market's accounts.

He said taxpayers had subsidised the electricity for the stallholders and were unnecessarily paying for the stalls to be put up on behalf of the stallholders each Wednesday and Saturday.

However, Coun Cook said the offending stall had now relocated further from the road.

The councillor also said that the council had already agreed to stop putting up the stalls, which will save the authority about £21,000 from the next financial year.

There was a small subsidy for electricity but the council took an overall small profit from the rent-paying stall-holders.

Coun Cook said all relevant financial information had been passed on to the pedestrians group.

Stockton Market, once known as the Queen of the North, was granted its first charter by Durham Prince Bishop Beck on May 11, 1310. The market gradually replaced one at Norton, first granted in 1099.