Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

Southend-on-Sea Borough Council is the local authority of Southend-on-Sea in Essex, England. It is a unitary authority, having the powers of a non-metropolitan county and district council combined. It is a member of the East of England Local Government Association.

Politics

Seventeen wards each return three councillors, a total of 51. Councillors serve four years and one third of the council is elected each year, followed by one year without election. The composition of the council is (as of 31 October 2015):

The council was controlled by the Conservative Party since gaining control in the 2000 election, they maintained a minority administration for a short while after the 2012 local elections, although a subsequent defection from the Independent Group gave them control again in May 2013. The Conservatives lost control of the council in the 2014 election, with the council run by a rainbow coalition of Independent Group, Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors. The 2015 election saw the Conservatives make some gains, resulting in a breakaway UKIP faction (who formed the Southend Independence Group) joining forces with the existing rainbow coalition to continue to run the council.

Southend-on-Sea

Southend-on-Sea ( pronunciation ) (commonly referred to as just Southend) is a seaside resort town and wider unitary authority area with borough status, in Essex, England, on the north side of the Thames estuary 40 miles (64 km) east of central London. It is bordered to the north by Rochford and to the west by Castle Point. It is home to the longest leisure pier in the world, Southend Pier.London Southend Airport is located 1.5 NM (2.8 km; 1.7 mi) north of the town centre.

History

Originally the "south end" of the village of Prittlewell, Southend was originally home to a few poor fisherman huts and farms that lay at the southern extremity of Prittlewell Priory land. In the 1790s landowner Daniel Scratton sold off land either side of what was to become the High Street, and the Grand Hotel (now Royal Hotel) and Grove Terrace (now Royal Terrace) were completed by 1794, and stagecoaches from London made it accessible. Due to the bad transportation links between Southend and London, there was not rapid development during the Georgian Era like Brighton. It was the coming of the railways in the 19th Century and the visit of Princess Caroline that Southend's status of a Seaside resort grew. During the 19th century Southend's pier was first constructed and the Clifftown development built, attracting many tourists in the summer months to its seven miles of beaches and bathing in the sea. Good rail connections and proximity to London mean that much of the economy has been based on tourism, and that Southend has been a dormitory town for city workers ever since. Southend Pier is the world's longest pleasure pier at 1.34 mi (2.16 km). It has suffered fires and ship collisions, most recently in October 2005, but the basic pier structure has been repaired each time. There has been significant loss of pier-head facilities since the major fire in 1976.

Southend (UK Parliament constituency)

Southend was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Southend-on-Sea in Essex. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

The constituency was created in 1918 by splitting the town of Southend from the existing constituency of South East Essex. The sitting MP for that constituency, Rupert Guinness, was elected to the new constituency. It was abolished for the 1950 general election, when it was divided into the new constituencies of Southend East and Southend West.

Members of Parliament

Guinness family

For most of the 20th century, this constituency and one of its successors was held by four members of the Guinness family. When Rupert Guinness was elevated to the Peerage upon the death of his father, he was succeeded by his wife, Gwendolen. When she retired in 1935 she was succeeded by her eldest daughter's husband, Henry "Chips" Channon. Channon continued to serve as MP for one of the successor constituencies, Southend West, until his death in 1958. That seat was then represented by his son, Paul Channon, until 1997. Because of this connection, the seat became known in the media as "Guinness-on-Sea".

Southend (band)

Southend (sometimes known as South End) is an Australian house-techno band formed around 1992. Based in Sydney and formed around synthesiser/keyboardists Stuart McCarthy, Steve Younan, Sameer Sen-Gupta and vocalist Melinda Page, they had a number of hits in the mid-1990s, most notably "The Winner Is...", released in June 1994 which reached the national ARIA Top 10. "The Winner Is..." was based around a sample of the then International Olympic Committee chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch announcing that the winner of the 2000 Summer Olympics was "Syd-er-ney". They were signed to the Volition Records label and performed regularly at the Big Day Out from 1993 to 1996.

Sen-Gupta left the band in 1995 to pursue a solo career, and was replaced with guitarist Justin Frew who would go on to form Antenna with McCarthy, Dave Faulkner (Hoodoo Gurus) and Kim Salmon in 1998. Antenna’s Installation album was the first ever release on Mushroom International.

On the production side, Southend have produced local and international releases for Hoodoo Gurus, Paul Holden, Acid Babies, The Whitlams, Kim Salmon and Michal Nicholas as well as a remix collaboration with Sasha Vatoff of Vagen’s track "Buggin" and a cover of Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy" which appeared on Groovescooter Records’ Re:fashioned 2.

Council

A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county level, but most legislative bodies at the state or national level are not considered councils. At such levels, there may be no separate executive branch, and the council may effectively represent the entire government. A board of directors might also be denoted as a council. A committee might also be denoted as a council, though a committee is generally a subordinate body composed of members of a larger body, while a council may not be. Because many schools have a student council, the council is the form of governance with which many people are likely to have their first experience as electors or participants.

A member of a council may be referred to as a councillor, or by the gender-specific titles of councilman and councilwoman.

In politics

Notable examples of types of councils encountered in politics include:

Local councils of the Boy Scouts of America

The program of the Boy Scouts of America is administered through 273 local councils, with each council covering a geographic area that may vary from a single city to an entire state. Each council receives an annual charter from the National Council and is usually incorporated as a charitable organization. Most councils are administratively divided into districts that directly serve Scout units.

Councils fall into one of four regions: Western, Central, Southern, and Northeast. Each region is then subdivided into areas. The total number of councils depends on how they are counted:

Organization

The council level organization is similar to that of the National Council. Councils are headed by a collective of three people known as the 'Key 3'. The Key 3 consists of the Scout executive, a paid employee who administers a staff of professional Scouters; a council president, a volunteer, serves as the chairman of a volunteer board of directors; and a council commissioner, also a volunteer, coordinates the efforts of trained volunteers who provide direct service to the units (Cub Scout packs, Boy Scout troops, etc.).

Council (disambiguation)

A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. In England "the council" is a widely used term to refer to the county, borough, metropolitan, etc. council responsible for local government in a place.

Council may also refer to:

People

Places

Other uses