aid: southendonsea
name: SouthendOnSea.city
description: >-
  SouthendOnSea.city is an independent local information and community-participation platform for
  Southend-on-Sea, Essex, covering local news, community propositions and public voting, city
  information and the Southend Science Exhibition. Its public data API — Southend Now — serves
  unauthenticated, source-linked current and historical observations for the area: weather,
  designated bathing waters, marine conditions, modelled air quality and flood alerts. Three
  operations return the current snapshot, a JSON history and a CSV history, refreshed on a
  1,800-second interval, with source licensing and attribution preserved in the payload. The
  platform is independent and unofficial and states plainly that it is not operated by
  Southend-on-Sea City Council, Essex Police or any election authority.
type: Index
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/southendonsea/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-08-23'
modified: '2026-08-23'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
tags:
- Open Data
- Local Government Data
- Environment
- Weather
- Water Quality
- Air Quality
- Civic Tech
- United Kingdom
tags_raw:
- open data
- Southend-on-Sea
- weather
- environment
- local data
apis:
- aid: southendonsea:southendonsea-now-api
  name: Southend Now Public Data API
  description: >-
    Unauthenticated, source-linked current and historical Southend-on-Sea observations covering
    weather, designated bathing waters, marine conditions, modelled air quality and flood alerts.
    Three operations — current snapshot, JSON history, CSV history.
  humanURL: https://southendonsea.city/data/reuse
  baseURL: https://southendonsea.city/
  tags:
  - Open Data
  - Environment
  - Weather
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/southendonsea-now-api-openapi.yml
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://southendonsea.city/openapi.json
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://southendonsea.city/data/reuse
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/southendonsea-now-example.json
  - type: JSON
    url: https://southendonsea.city/api/southend-now
  - type: CSV
    url: https://southendonsea.city/api/southend-now/history.csv
common:
- type: APIsJSON
  url: https://southendonsea.city/.well-known/apis.json
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/southendonsea-llms.txt
- type: Website
  url: https://southendonsea.city
- type: Documentation
  url: https://southendonsea.city/data/reuse
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://southendonsea.city/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://southendonsea.city/privacy
maintainers:
- FN: SouthendOnSea.city
  email: hello@southendonsea.city
  url: https://southendonsea.city
x-provenance:
  added: '2026-08-23'
  method: searched
  source: https://southendonsea.city/.well-known/apis.json
  note: >-
    Submitted via apis.io/add on 2026-08-23 from hello@southendonsea.city and rated 71 (exemplar)
    by the gate — the highest-rated submission seen in this sweep, and it holds up.
    Unusually, the submitted APIs.json URL is CORRECT. It resolves at both
    /.well-known/apis.json and /apis.json, an invented control path returns a real 404, and every
    property it declares was fetched and confirmed. The OpenAPI is served as
    application/vnd.oai.openapi+json;version=3.0 — the correct media type, which almost no
    provider sets.
    The API was exercised anonymously: GET /api/southend-now returned live observations with real
    beach records, a licence note and a generatedAt timestamp, and the CSV history endpoint
    returned text/csv. No key, no signup.
    ONE THING RECORDED CAREFULLY. This is NOT a council or government API and must not be
    presented as one. The operator states on its own llms.txt that it is "independent and
    unofficial, and is not operated by Southend-on-Sea City Council, Essex Police or an election
    authority", and that its articles reorganise official Essex Police and council updates. The
    data is source-linked to official publishers; the platform is a third party republishing it.