Generally OpenStreetMap practice is to "map what's on the ground" https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Map_what's_on_the_ground

In this case, from the imagery it does indeed look like there are footpaths existing here, seems doubtful the council removed them.

See also the documentation for mapping footpaths https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:footway=sidewalk