£220,000 cost of falls to the county

Accident hotspots throughout the county, resulting in claims after people injured themselves on pavements and footpaths, include Crawley, Worthing and Chichester.

At the county council's own headquarters at County Hall, 1,000 was paid out in 2006/7, with a further 2,000 claimed for West Street.

But the biggest accident zone, shown under figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, is Crawley.

There, slips and falls ran to tens of thousands of pounds in compensation.

Claims in the Broadway and the High Street in Crawley Town Centre, Titmus Drive in Tilgate, Buckswood Drive in Gossops Green and a payout of 7,500 for a fall in Queensway, show the extent of the lack of maintenance of footpaths in the town.

Crawley MP Laura Moffatt said: "Crawley's pavements are already a messy patchwork of Tarmac and paving slabs to save the county council spending money on replacement worn out pavements.

"Whereas, 20 miles down the road in Storrington, West Sussex County Council spent 250,000 in replacing the high street pavements with high quality brick paving.

"These payouts indicate a lot of pain and upset for my constituents. Surely prevention by maintaining the pavements would be a much better use of our money."

In 2005/6, a chunk of 14,000 paid out by the county council was for Worthing with 5,941 relating to Portland Road, 3,882.10 for Central Walk and 1,000 on the junction of High Street with Chatsworth Road.

This followed on from 9,000 paid out in respect of Chestnut Walk, Worthing, in 2006/6.

Henry Smith, Leader of West Sussex County Council said: "West Sussex County Council is putting in an extra 1m a year into highways for each of the next four years.

"This money is being invested, despite decreasing grants coming from Central Government for highways maintenance."

Read the full report in the West Sussex Gazette.