Sidebars in content main content area?

Would appreciate some clarification on this one. Why are there sidebars within the main content area in the atpe template? (screenshot atpe-sidebars.png).

From my understanding of at_panelseverywhere and adaptive theme panels everywhere enables users via panels dashboard to place panels, mini-panels etc in the header and footer regions, in which otherwise blocks would have to be used. Adaptive theme controls the layout of the main content area.

However in main atpe template incorporates sidebars by default by that main content area. Therefore if sidebars are chosen within adaptive theme the user ends up with 2 sidebars outside the main content area (which don't collapse if no content is placed in them) and in the main content area which is only 50% by default another 2 sidebars within that! Attached screenshots better illustrate what I mean.

I'm using full width template of atpe.

Removing from atpe-site-template-fww.tpl

<?php if (!empty($content['sidebar_first'])): ?>
            <div class="region region-sidebar-first sidebar">
              <?php print render($content['sidebar_first']); ?>
            </div>
          <?php endif; ?>

          <?php if (!empty($content['sidebar_second'])): ?>
            <div class="region region-sidebar-second sidebar">
              <?php print render($content['sidebar_second']); ?>
            </div>
          <?php endif; ?>

Removing from atpe-site-template-fww.inc

'sidebar_first'     => t('Sidebar first'),
'sidebar_second'    => t('Sidebar second'),

Removing from atpe-site-template-fww.css

#panels-dnd-main  .region-sidebar-first {
  margin-left: -100%;
  width: 24.5%;
}
#panels-dnd-main  .region-sidebar-second {
  clear: none;
  margin-left: -24.5%;
  width: 24.5%;
}

#panels-dnd-main .region-sidebar-first,
#panels-dnd-main .region-sidebar-second

& taking away 25% left/right margin from

#panels-dnd-main #content-column .content-inner {
  margin: 0;
}

Is this a bug in the fact that the sidebars still display when there's no content in them on the main atpe template or am I doing something wrong?

Many thanks Jeff