Standing above the steps beside the Guildbourne Centre, Worthing’s familiar town-centre clock should be a useful local landmark.

Instead, it has become something rather less flattering.

Its metal frame is weathered. Its faces and surrounding structure have been repeatedly marked by bird mess. The time displayed cannot always be relied upon. Around it sits one of the busiest and most prominent pedestrian spaces in central Worthing.

It is not hidden behind a building or tucked away in a forgotten corner. Residents, shoppers, workers and visitors pass it every day.

So why has such an obvious problem been allowed to remain?

A small job — or a symbol of something bigger?

On its own, cleaning and repairing a public clock may not seem like the most urgent issue facing the town.

Worthing has roads to repair, services to provide and major regeneration decisions to make. Nobody is suggesting that a clock should take priority over vulnerable residents or essential public services.

But civic pride is often measured through the small things.

A clean bench. A working streetlight. Maintained planting. Legible signs. Public features that function as intended.

When one of the most conspicuous structures in the town centre is visibly dirty and cannot reliably perform its only practical purpose, it sends an unfortunate message: nobody is paying attention.

That impression matters to residents. It also matters to businesses attempting to attract customers and to visitors forming their first impression of Worthing.

Who actually owns the problem?

The answer is surprisingly difficult to establish.

Worthing Borough Council owns the freehold interest in the land on which the Guildbourne Centre was developed. However, the centre itself is held under a long lease dating from 1972, with the leasehold investment recently sold at auction for £1.62 million. The complex includes shops, offices and residential interests, making responsibility for individual structures and public areas potentially complicated.

That means the clock’s upkeep could rest with:

  • Worthing Borough Council;
  • the Guildbourne Centre’s leaseholder or new owner;
  • the centre’s managing agent;
  • or another organisation responsible for the surrounding public realm.

No readily available public record clearly identifies which of them maintains the clock mechanism, cleans the structure or pays for repairs.

But contractual complexity is not a convincing reason for leaving the clock in its present condition.

Someone owns it. Someone is responsible for the land beneath it. Someone has the authority to commission a clean, inspect the mechanism and decide what happens next.

Worthing residents deserve to know who that is.

How long has it been broken?

Public complaints about the clock have circulated during 2026, with local discussion increasingly connecting its condition to wider concerns about the appearance of Worthing town centre.

The Worthing Journal has publicly challenged the failure to clean and repair it, arguing that claims of renewed civic pride are undermined while such an obvious landmark remains neglected.

What remains unavailable is a precise public account of:

  • when the current fault was first reported;
  • when the clock was last professionally serviced;
  • whether a repair estimate has been obtained;
  • how much routine maintenance costs;
  • and which organisation currently holds responsibility for it.

There is also no published daily upkeep figure. In reality, a structure like this is unlikely to incur a meaningful cost every day. Its expenditure would consist primarily of occasional cleaning, inspection, electrical work, repainting and clock-mechanism servicing.

That makes the continued failure more difficult to understand. This is not a major public building requiring millions of pounds of restoration. It is a modest freestanding clock needing somebody to inspect it, clean it and determine what has failed.

Worthing is already promising a cleaner town centre

Worthing Borough Council announced a town-centre and seafront improvement programme in August 2025, including repairs and repainting of benches, railings and bins, alongside other public-realm work.

The council has also been consulting on measures intended to reduce problems caused by wildlife feeding in the town centre — an issue directly connected with bird fouling and the condition of public spaces.

Those initiatives are welcome.

But they also make the condition of the Guildbourne clock harder to ignore.

It would make little sense to refresh benches, paint railings and promote a cleaner central Worthing while leaving one of the area’s most recognisable structures dirty and defective.

A difficult moment for the Guildbourne

The clock’s condition comes as the wider Guildbourne Centre enters another uncertain chapter.

The long leasehold interest was sold for £1.62 million in July. Auction information described a substantial mixed-use property containing approximately 20 ground-floor retail units and a six-storey office investment, generating annual income of about £740,000.

Behind those figures is a more difficult reality: ageing buildings, vacant accommodation, substantial ground rent and the challenge of making an older shopping centre relevant to the modern town.

A council-commissioned retail study had already identified the Guildbourne as a particular “problem area,” noting its vacancies, weak appeal as a destination and tendency to function primarily as a route between the car park and the wider shopping area.

Nobody expects those larger problems to be solved overnight.

But fixing the clock would be an achievable start.

It would show that the new owner, the council and town-centre organisations recognise that appearances matter. More importantly, it would demonstrate that a publicly visible defect can be reported, assigned to somebody and resolved.

Five simple questions

We are asking Worthing Borough Council and the Guildbourne Centre’s owners or managing agents to answer five questions:

  1. Who owns the freestanding clock and is contractually responsible for maintaining it?
  2. When was it last cleaned, inspected and serviced?
  3. When was the current fault first reported?
  4. Has a repair quotation been obtained, and what would the work cost?
  5. Will the clock be cleaned and returned to full working order — and, if so, by what date?

This does not need to become a lengthy dispute over leases, boundaries and departmental responsibilities.

The organisations involved should inspect it together, establish responsibility and get the job done.

Worthing deserves better than stopped time

The Guildbourne clock is not an architectural masterpiece. It is not an ancient monument and it will never compete with Worthing Pier as a symbol of the town.

But it is prominent. It is familiar. It occupies an important space through which thousands of people move.

Allowing it to remain dirty and unreliable tells residents that visible neglect has become normal.

Repairing it would not transform Worthing town centre. But it would be an inexpensive, tangible sign that somebody cares about it.

The clock has three faces. It is time for at least one responsible organisation to show theirs.

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