Just two shop floor staff are on duty and shoppers are mostly serving themselves at shouty automated tills in WH Smith’s Stevenage branch, where there are boxes of goods on the floor, some empty shelves and missing signage.

Set in a faded shopping centre that was cutting-edge when it heralded Great Britain’s first new town in 1965 but is now gap-toothed with empty stores, WH Smith in Stevenage is a clear example of what is at stake for 500 communities across Britain whose local store is now at risk.

Tamara Sturza, working in the nearby Cafe Chateau, says she would be worried if the WH Smith closed.

“We are very dependent on people coming into town for the shops. Quite a few have already closed,” she says, looking out at the vacant former Body Shop and BrightHouse stores opposite.

WH Smith’s listed owner is in talks to sell off its ailing high street estate, where sales have been falling for years, in order to focus investment on its fast-growing travel outlets at airports, railway stations and hospitals.

While a number of bidders are thought to be examining a possible £100m takeover deal, including Bensons for Beds owner Alteri and HMV owner Doug Putman, the future for WH Smith’s 5,000 high street staff remains uncertain and it is possible the 233-year-old chain’s name will disappear from British town centres.

WH Smith is an important distributor of books, including children’s textbooks, newspapers, magazines, confectionery and cards. Its disappearance would not only make it harder to find those items on high streets but permanently knock back trade for those sectors. Its branches also house 200 major post offices.

WH Smith in Stevenage may look a bit tired, but it is an important service for the town, helping to draw in shoppers to a centre that is clearly struggling.

The nearest alternative post offices are about 20 minutes’ walk away and are just small branches offering fewer services. The only other bookshop nearby is The Works, which has a limited, cut-price range; there are few alternatives if you want a magazine or newspaper.

The possible loss of another major retailer would be a further blow to Stevenage, where there are already large empty premises left by the closure of stores including TK Maxx, Poundland, which has moved location, and BHS, which has been empty since the department store collapsed in 2016.

However, it’s no surprise to Stevenage shoppers that WH Smith’s high street stores are under threat.

“I don’t think it’s a great shop,” says Lynne Johnson, who has been in to use the post office at the rear of WH Smith, complete with a long queue as only one member of staff is behind the counters when the Guardian arrives.

“It is dark and dingy, although the post office is great – the staff are great.”

Brian McBride is also a fan of the post office staff but says he can get most of the same services at smaller outlets elsewhere and the rest of the store is “very expensive”. “If I want a card I can get it for £1 there,” he says, pointing to cut-price chain Card Factory opposite. “Its £3 or £4 in WH Smith. Why would I want to shop there?”

The chain has seen limited investment in recent years as WH Smith has sought to protect profits and fund the expansion of its successful travel business with endless cuts at the high street stores.

The carpet in many stores got so bad a few years ago that it gained its own heavily critical feed on X, then known as Twitter, eventually prompting the replacement of flooring at many stores.

However, the stores remain important for certain industries and Douglas McCabe, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, says print media – including magazines, books and newspapers – will be hit hardest if WH Smith does not survive or is radically changed under a new owner.

“It’s easy to forget that for a lot of people, WH Smith is the place where they are going to pick up the one or two books they buy a year. Handing it over to the supermarkets is not ideal. What we see with newspapers and magazines, they are not disappearing entirely [from supermarket shelves] but they are retreating to smaller spaces in not the highest footfall areas.”

Supermarkets account for more than half of all UK retail sales of magazines by value – led by Tesco and Sainsbury’s – but WH Smith high street stores rank as the third most important retail chain outlet.

WH Smith accounted for 8.1% of all UK retail magazine sales in September last year, equal with the Co-op and ahead of the likes of Asda, Morrisons M&S, Waitrose and Lidl, according to Enders.

“At this point it is not an existential crisis, publishers would hope to get their titles to someone else if they had to, or that someone buys the chain and keeps stocking in the same way,” says Chris Duncan, a former senior executive at Sun and Times owner News UK and ex-chief executive of Bauer, publisher of magazines including Grazia and Heat.

“However, for some publications it is still their biggest print sale, their best retailer,” he says. “For newspapers it will be a small percentage of their sales they don’t want to lose. If WH Smith disappears, or a new owner wants to downsize or doesn’t want the complexity of selling print titles, it is going to leave a dent in profitability for newspapers as much as magazines.”

Nick Carroll, the director of retail insight at market research group Mintel, says supermarkets and online retailers, such as Amazon, would be the most likely beneficiaries of a retreat by WH Smith. “It would just be a real loss to the high street,” he says.

“Those that value the physical element of books and magazines, particularly outside London where there are not a massive amount of specialists, would have to go online.”

Carroll says there is an opportunity for any buyer to invest in modernising WH Smith stores, perhaps including better deals with landlords or reducing the size of some outlets.

“Outside of London those stores can play a huge role,” he says.

McCabe from Enders adds that a revamped WH Smith could play to greater interest in physical media among the younger generations, from books and magazine to CDs and vinyl records. “It is cool, partly as it is not the internet. It is not going to send you alerts, it is a separate space,” he says.

“An entertainment store could work if it feels buzzy any maybe includes a cafe. It would certainly take some imagination to get there, but never rule it out.”

That’s something Tobias, Tom and Phoebe – teenagers who have come into Stevenage to scan the vinyl and CDs on offer at HMV and nearby charity shops – can get behind. “I would be sad if it closed,” Tobias says, as the friends say they use WH Smith sometimes for buying books and other school kit. “We would maybe go to WH Smith if it sold vinyl.”