County Borough of Southend-on-Sea County Borough of Southend-on-Sea Southend-on-Sea was a local government district from 1866 to 1974 around the seaside resort of Southend-on-Sea in Essex, England. Southend adopted the Local Government Act 1858 and a local board was established in 1866. It became an urban sanitary district in 1875. It was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1892. The name was changed from Southend to Southend-on-Sea in 1893. It gained the status of county borough in 1914. The local government district originally consisted of the South End of the parish of Prittlewell. This became a separate parish of St John the Baptist for
2014 Clacton by-election controversy by writing in "The Times" that the Conservatives should be “careless” of Clacton voters’ opinions as “Clacton-on-Sea is going nowhere”, remarks which were disowned by local Conservatives and denounced by Carswell as "reflective of what so many in the upper echelons of the Tory party really think" and were cited by two local Conservative councillors as a reason for defecting to UKIP. An important component of the UKIP campaign was a public meeting of 700 people at the Clacton Coastal Academy with Douglas Carswell and UKIP leader Nigel Farage which was billed as the "biggest public meeting in Clacton