You are going to walk into town. You put on your shoes, a jacket, perhaps pick up a shopping-bag and grab an umbrella. Oh, and finally your crash helmet.

A crash helmet?

Be safe rather than sore and sorry. Because beware, Guildford’s damage-riddled and shoddily repaired pavements can be dangerous, and that is no joke.

But our town is far from the only one so badly maintained. Across the country, a Freedom of Information request reveals that in the 12 months ending May 31, 2018, pedestrians made 10,572 injury claims for trips and slips to local authorities who had to pay more than £2 million to 859 successful claimants.

In August that year, councils blamed “decades of underfunding by successive governments” for their hazardous pavements.

Don’t forget your crash helmet!

But little has changed and we have already published how Dragon NEWS reporter Hugh Coakley invited local councillors on a tour of inspection and surprised them, pointing out example after example of the wobbly state of our pavements in the town centre.

One of the council party actually tripped on on a hazard during the tour. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt. That may have seemed ironically amusing at the time but it is not funny. Readers have told us about their scary experiences. Some say they have been badly hurt in falls.

We have many poorly laid stretches of pavement. Some replacement slabs have become wobbly or uneven within months, a real added danger to our most vulnerable, the elderly and infirm, the disabled who have to use walking-sticks, crutches, walkers and wheelchairs, as well as to the mothers and grandmothers with baby buggies and/or unsuspecting toddlers wobbling alongside.

And the standard of repair, when the inevitable holes are dug for maintenance or installations, is deeply unsatisfactory. The jobs seem half-done, botched, surfaces not restored to match the original condition, as with setts in our much-photographed and filmed cobbled High Street.

A combination of cracked and broken slabs with irregular patches of tarmac and empty shops looks a mess in the otherwise attractive Friary Street area.

Why is this so hard to manage? And why are our councillors unaware of the problems?

Maintenance of our pavements and our roads is a bread and butter issue for our councils. Doorstepping councillors say potholes are among the most frequent complaints. Our roads and pavements are heavily used and unrepaired faults threaten to cause injuries, or worse.

We are told the underlying problem is lack of budget. But is that the whole answer?

Or is the poor standard of maintenance an inevitable consequence of outsourcing and allowing the profit motive to rule?

But even if lack of funds could be an acceptable excuse, is the existing budget being spent well? No, it is not. We have many examples in the town of poor workmanship, inadequate quality inspection and what appears to be a lack of supervision. That is not a budget issue. The issues are lack of of management, competence and responsibility.

Tarmac repair to the setts, to what looks like a water meter in the High Street, has been there for over a year.

Private companies are allowed to get away with shoddy work, leaving the taxpayer short-changed and the pedestrian accident-prone. Utility companies and others should not be allowed to leave our roads and pavements in a worse state than when they found them.

They cannot be trusted to ensure quality of repair unsupervised and the supervision should be overseen by council employees responsible to councillors and, through them, to us, the ones who pay, the ones who walk these pavements.

Councillors must be accountable. Accountability is one of the principles, an ethical standard, a duty for those who hold public office. It is not an option.

Unfortunately, Cllr Matt Furniss (Con, Shalford), SCC cabinet member for highways decisions, does not seem to understand his obligations to us. He is the councillor responsible, a local man who must be familiar with the perilous state of our pavements and roads. He was Guildford’s deputy council leader, representing Christchurch, until being voted out in May.

If he wishes to blame the budget he should take it up with the government run by his fellow Conservative Party members who have stripped out all the grants local authorities used to receive.

We invited Cllr Furniss’s comment but we were ignored. That is not accountability. That is not civic responsibility.

But Dragon NEWS will not give up. We have provided the results of our survey and have written to Cllr Furniss, again seeking a response.

Readers will be able to make up their minds what any reply, or lack of it, reveals. As will the voters of Shalford when they are asked to elect a county councillor 18 months from now.