Why are the UK pavements so bad?

My experience of council executives is that they are somewhere between mediocre and incompetent. The usual excuses fly about including lack of money or red tape but to be honest, things can still be done if people had the will to do it and the pride of their work.

The pavements in Cheltenham are in a complete state. Some are tarmac and are usually passable but the ones that are paved consist of slabs that are largely cracked or in some cases have been damaged by tree roots. Once, I was pushing a friend in their wheelchair from his house about a mile to the town centre and to be honest, it was so hard pushing it that I doubt many people would be able to get around in a wheelchair by themselves.

Councils have a duty to repair pavements but of course they only have to do it when there is an imminent danger like a large crack or step in the pavement. Most of these cracked slabs are not dangerous, they just look very poor. Slabs are not expensive to buy but the council need to ask two very important questions and then answer them and then get on with it.

1) Why are the pavements getting cracked? I would suggest that this is primarily due to vehicles parking on the pavement - something that I don't believe is illegal in itself (although it should be!)
2) What are they going to do about it? The council, through the Local Government Association, should insist on changing the law so that parking on the pavement is an offence that can attract tickets and/or prosecution unless the pavement is designed for it (i.e. tarmac) AND there are signs that explicitly allow it, although it would be more consistent in these cases to shorten the width of the pavement and make people park on the road.

Once these two things are done, the council and/or police should ticket every person that they catch parking on the pavement. Sadly, this currently sometimes includes Police vehicles, other emergency services and even rubbish lorries, although if it was made illegal, this should only happen in genuine emergencies, where if damage is caused, it can be identified and repaired immediately and added where appropriate to any insurance claims.

Is no-one surprised that the standard of pavements is woeful when the people whose job it is to repair them have no way of keeping heavy vehicles off them? Walk through Cheltenham most days and you will see more than a handful of vehicles parked on the pavement (usually halfway). Ticket them! Set a principle and stick to it. Ensure it is enforced - another pathetic example is the amount of time it takes wardens to ticket a car. Most people who park illegally imho do so quickly (less than 5 minutes) so are next to zero chance of being charged.

Governments and parties are still missing these basics. They are all talk, talk, talk and all prove, regardless of party allegiance that they cannot handle any proactive fix to things that vex most ordinary people much more than wishy-washy numbers about immigration or foreign wars we know nothing about.