Dogs on the beach
Dogs on Essex beaches
Where the council bans dogs from a beach, and when, taken from its own order. Each town below has the stretches in the order's words and today's answer.
Along the coast
- Southend-on-SeaNo ban today; the summer ban starts again on 1 May 2027.
From Southend-on-Sea City Council's Public Spaces Protection Order (Dog Control) No 1 of 2025, which runs until 10 July 2028. We read it on 9 October 2026. The order also puts dogs on a lead on every promenade and on the green areas along the beaches in the same months, and keeps them out of beach play areas. We have not placed those, and the mud and sandbanks of the Thames beyond the beach outlines are not drawn, because we cannot tell whether the order counts them as beaches.
Tendring's byelaws also ban dogs from eleven stretches of beach from 1 May to 30 September, at Harwich, Dovercourt, Walton, Frinton, Holland-on-Sea and Clacton, and Castle Point has dog rules for Canvey Island's foreshore. We have not placed these yet, so those beaches are not listed here.
What the orders say here
Southend-on-Sea City Council has put 4 stretches of beach off limits to dogs, across 1 town.
The season is 1 May to 30 September, all day.
Each answer is worked out on the day, in UK time, from the order's own dates, so a ban that has not started or has ended says so. Where we have not placed an order on a beach, the page says that, and never reads silence as permission.