Urban Cure Responds to City Centre Dispersal Order: We Need Urban Solutions Not Urban Displacement

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14 July 2025 — Southend-on-Sea. 

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This weekend, Essex Police enforced a dispersal order covering Southend city centre, train stations Southend Victoria and Southend Central and the entire seafront stretch either side of the pier.

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The order gave officers the power to arrest anyone suspected of antisocial behaviour triggered by a gathering and reported altercation with the dispersal remained in effect for 24 hours. However, no offences was recorded by police.

 

Urban Cure agree everyone should feel safe in public space, but when safety comes only through policing and exclusion and not through investment and opportunity it raises a deeper question:

• Why are young people being pushed out of public life instead of being pulled into community purpose?

• The areas targeted by this order are not just "hotspots". They are home to Southend’s most diverse, most economically excluded and publicly policed communities. Rather than protecting public space for everyone, dispersal orders protect it from the most diverse and economically excluded communities.

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“Let’s be honest, this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a symptom of structural inequality, where neighbourhoods with the highest percentage of non white residents are repeatedly shut out of investment, voice and power. Urban Cure isn’t about token inclusion we are about implementing a Justice Clause that transfers real ownership to the very people this system is leaving behind. Regeneration should never be done to a community. It should be built by them, with them and for them.”
Dee Curtis, Founder & Director, Urban Cure CIC

 

Urban Cure is delivering a new model

• Insulating communities from criminalisation by investing in their potential

• Embedding care over control for young people

• creating visible changes to invisible barriers

 

It’s your right to remain and build where you live

It’s time for Southend-on-Sea City Council to go beyond containment.

Urban Cure solution model of public trust, community resilience and shared ownership is long term and generational right where the need is greatest.

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