City status in the United Kingdom

Categories: Lists of cities | Geography of the United Kingdom | Cities in the United Kingdom | United Kingdom-related lists | Local government of the United Kingdom

City status in the United Kingdom is granted by the British monarch to a select group of communities. The status does not apply automatically on the basis of any particular criteria, although it was traditionally given to towns with diocesan cathedrals. This association between having a cathedral and being called a city was established in the early 1540s when Henry VIII founded dioceses (and therefore cathedrals) in six English towns and also granted them all city status by issuing Letters Patent. City status is conferred by Letters Patent (an "open letter" and not by a royal charter) but there are some British cities which predate the historical monarchy and have been regarded as cities since "time immemorial". City status brings no special benefits, other than the right to be called a city.

Some people have disputed the official definition, especially inhabitants of places that have been considered cities in the past but are not generally considered cities today. Additionally, although the Crown clearly has the right to bestow 'official' city status, some have doubted the right of the Crown to define the word "city" in the United Kingdom. In informal usage, "city" can be used for large towns or conurbations that are not formally cities. The best-known example of this is London, which contains two cities (the City of London and the City of Westminster) but is not itself a city.

There are currently sixty-six officially designated cities in the UK, of which eight have been created since 2000 in competitions to celebrate the new millennium and Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. The designation is highly sought after, with over forty communities submitting bids at recent competitions.

City status

Charters originated as charters of incorporation, allowing a town to became an incorporated borough, or to hold markets. Some of these charters recognised officially that the town involved was a city. Apart from recognition, it became accepted that such a charter could make a town into a city. The earliest examples of these are Hereford and Worcester, both of which date their city status to 1189.

Until the 16th century, a town was invariably recognised as a city by the Crown if it had a diocesan cathedral within its limits. This has led to some cities that are very small today, because they were unaffected by population growth during the industrial revolution—notably Wells, which has a population of about 10,000. After the 16th century, no new dioceses (and no new cities) were created until the 19th century, but the practice was revived with the creation of the diocese of Ripon in 1836. A string of new dioceses and cities followed. This process was changed in 1888 to allow Birmingham and other large settlements that didn't have cathedrals to become recognised as cities (Birmingham's parish church later became a cathedral).

Towns that became seats of bishoprics in the 20th century, such as Guildford and Blackburn, were not automatically granted recognition as cities. However, well into the 20th century, it was assumed that the presence of a cathedral was sufficient to elevate a town to city status, and that for cathedral cities, the city charters were recognising its city status rather than granting it. On this basis, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica makes the claim that Southwell (diocese established 1884) and St Asaph (an historic diocese) are cities. These towns were never granted letters patent recognising this by the Crown, and so when the letters patent became the important criterion they were no longer generally considered cities.

A town can now apply for city status by submitting an application to the Lord Chancellor, who makes recommendations to the sovereign. These application competitions are usually held to mark special events, such as coronations, royal jubilees or the Millennium.

Some cities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have the further distinction of having a Lord Mayor rather than a simple Mayor. In Scotland, the equivalent is the Lord Provost. Lord Mayors have the right to be styled "The Right Worshipful The Lord Mayor". The Lord Mayors and Provosts of Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, City of London, and York all have the further right to be styled "The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor" (or Provost), though they are not members of the Privy Council as this style usually indicates. The style is associated with the office, not the person holding it, so "The Right Worshipful Joe Bloggs" would be incorrect.

There are currently 66 recognised cities (including 30 Lord Mayoralties or Lord Provostships) in the UK: 50 cities (23 Lord Mayoralties) in England, five cities (two Lord Mayoralties) in Wales, six cities (four Lord Provostships) in Scotland and five cities (one Lord Mayoralty) in Northern Ireland.

Rochester was recognised as a city from 1211 to 1998. Until 1998, it was a local government district in the county of Kent. On April 1, 1998, the existing local government districts of Rochester and Gillingham were abolished and became the new unitary authority of Medway. Since it was the local government district that officially held city status, when it was abolished, it also ceased to be a city. The other local government districts with city status that were abolished around this time (Bath and Hereford) had decided to appoint Charter Trustees to maintain the existence of the city and the mayoralty. However, Rochester upon Medway City Council had decided not to. Medway Council apparently only became aware of this when, in 2002, they discovered that Rochester was not on the Lord Chancellor's Office's list of cities. [1] [2]

List of cities

The following are the official cities in the United Kingdom as of 2004. Those which have been cities since time immemorial are indicated with "TI" in the "since" column.

Note that the Cathedral column lists the diocesan cathedrals that were the grounds for the granting of city status, that is, cathedrals of the established Church of England, and the formerly established Church in Wales or Church of Ireland, in cities recognised prior to 1888. The Church of Scotland has no bishops. Many of these cities have Roman Catholic cathedrals, but these are not listed.

⁽¹⁾ Bath Abbey and Westminster Abbey are no longer cathedrals.

⁽²⁾ Coventry has had three cathedrals, the first, St. Mary's from 1043–1539; the second, St. Michael's from 1918–1940, when it was destroyed by German bombardment; and its replacement, also St. Michael's, built alongside the old cathedral, consecrated in 1962.

⁽³⁾ Note that the City of London covers only the "square mile", and is usually just referred to as "the City". The larger conurbation of London has no city charter, and consists of the City of London, the City of Westminster and 31 other London boroughs. This can be compared to the City of Brussels, within Brussels.

⁽⁴⁾ The City of St Albans is a local government district. [3] However, the district council calls itself "St Albans District Council" or "St Albans City and District". If the unparished area of St Albans did have city status, then it would have charter trustees, or would have lost its city status like Rochester did.

Cities now in the Republic of Ireland

The current cities in the Republic of Ireland were created using this system, but have since left the United Kingdom. These cities are

City councils

Being a city gives a settlement no special rights other than that to call itself a city. Nonetheless, this is considered very prestigious and competitions for the status are hard fought.

Most cities have "city councils", which have varying powers depending upon the type of settlement. There are unitary authorities (including metropolitan boroughs) that are responsible for all local government services within their area. The only current London borough having city status is the City of Westminster. Many cities have ordinary district councils which share power with county councils. At the bottom end of the scale, some cities have civil parish councils, with no more power than a village.

Some cities have no council at all. Where they used to have a city council but it has been abolished they may have Charter Trustees, drawn from the local district council, who appoint the mayor and look after the city's traditions.

Most "cities" are not cities in the traditional sense of the word (i.e. a large urban area) but are in fact local government districts which have city status, and which often include large rural areas. For example the City of Canterbury and City of Wakefield, cover large rural areas. The largest "city" district in terms of area is the City of Carlisle, which covers some 400 square miles (1040km²) of mostly rural landscape in the north of England, and is larger than some of the smaller counties such as Merseyside or Rutland. The City of Sheffield contains part of the Peak District National Park. This is however merely a curiosity and has had no impact on the general usage of the word "city" in the UK, which has unambiguously retained its urban meaning in British English. Residents of the rural parts of the "City of Carlisle" and the like might be aware of the name of their local council, but would not consider themselves to be inhabitants of a city with a small "c".

Equally, there are some cities where the local government district is in fact smaller than the historical or natural boundaries of the city. Three examples of this are Manchester (where the traditional area associated includes areas of the neighboring authorities of Trafford, Tameside and Bury), Wolverhampton (areas of the neighbouring authorities of Walsall, Dudley and South Staffordshire) and most obviously, London (Greater London outside the City of London).

This contrasts with the situation in the United States, where the primary meaning of the word "city" is any area contained within city limits, completely disregarding whether or not that area is recognisable as a traditional "city".

Due to the widespread interest in information about towns and cities, and for comparisons between urban populations and with those living outside towns, the Government at each census produces the report Key Statistics for Urban Areas which separates the population of the actual town or city from the population of the area controlled by the council bearing its name.

City applications

City status grants have been used to mark special royal and other occasions. Swansea was granted city status in 1969 to mark the investiture of Charles, Duke of Cornwall, as Prince of Wales. At the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, Derby was granted the honour. The use of formal competitions for city status is a recent practice. The first competition was held in 1992, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Queen's reign. Sunderland was the winner. In 1994 two historic seats of Bishoprics—St David's and Armagh—were granted city status. They had been considered cities historically, but this status had lapsed. For the city applications in 2000, held to celebrate the millennium, the following towns and boroughs requested city status:

• England: Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Brighton and Hove, Chelmsford, Colchester, Croydon, Doncaster, Dover, Guildford, Ipswich, Luton, Maidstone, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Preston, Reading, Shrewsbury and Atcham, Southend on Sea, Southwark, Stockport, Swindon, Telford, Warrington, Wolverhampton.
• Wales: Aberystwyth, Machynlleth, Newport, Newtown, St Asaph, Wrexham.
• Scotland: Ayr, Inverness, Paisley, Stirling.
• Northern Ireland: Ballymena, Lisburn.

The three winners were Brighton and Hove, Wolverhampton, and Inverness.

For the 2002 applications, held to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee, the entrants included all of the above towns except Southwark, together with Greenwich and Wirral in England, Dumfries in Scotland and Carrickfergus, Coleraine, Craigavon and Newry in Northern Ireland. There was mild controversy in the rest of the UK over the fact that two of the three winners of the 2000 competition were English towns—especially in Wales—and so 2002 was run as four separate competitions. The winners in Great Britain were Preston in England, Newport in Wales, and Stirling in Scotland. In Northern Ireland it was decided to award city status to two entrants: Lisburn (predominantly unionist) and Newry (predominantly nationalist). Exeter was awarded Lord Mayoralty status in a separate application.

Cathedral towns

Now that being the seat of a Church of England diocese is no longer sufficient (or necessary) to become a city, there are a number of cathedral towns. These are sometimes referred to as cities by their residents—particularly St Asaph and Rochester.

Additionally Llandaff, which is now part of the City of Cardiff local government district, is home to Llandaff Cathedral.

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica refers to Llandaff, Southwell and St Asaph as cities, along with Armagh and Lisburn in Northern Ireland, which only gained the status formally in 1994 and 2002 respectively.

There are 2 towns in Scotland that have Anglican Cathedrals but do not have city status — Oban and Perth. Additionally, Brechin and Elgin are often referred to as cities.

There are 4 towns in Northern Ireland with Anglican Cathedrals that do not have city status — Clogher, Downpatrick, Dromore and Enniskillen.

In total there are 18 UK towns that have city status but don't have cathedrals.

Large towns

As noted above, in ordinary discourse, "city" can refer to any large settlement, with no fixed limit.

At every census the government produces the report Key Statistics for Urban Areas which shows that the following are the largest urban areas without city status:

• Reading - 232,662
• Dudley - 194,919
• Northampton - 189,474
• Luton - 185,543
• Milton Keynes - 184,506
• Walsall - 170,994

It should be noted that city status is usually not granted to urban areas, but to local government areas such as civil parishes and boroughs — the boundaries, and hence populations, of which are not necessarily the same. The City of Stirling provides a counterexample here, in that in Stirling district's application for city status was specifically for the the urban area of Stirling - proposed city boundaries were included, and so not all of the district has city status.

This leads to the oddity whereby city status can be granted to areas that are not generally regarded as towns (despite them holding borough status). Examples include Wirral Council (main town Birkenhead) and Medway Council (main towns Gillingham and the former city of Rochester). Both Wirral and Medway Councils applied for city status in 2002 along with the London Boroughs of Croydon and Greenwich.

Examples of "federal cities" of this type would be the Stoke on Trent and Brighton and Hove - both of which are made up of a number of separate towns, although in both cases the borough was formed before city status was granted.

See also

• Cities in England
• Towns of the United Kingdom
• List of English cities by population
• List of conurbations in the United Kingdom
• UK topics

External links

• Government list of UK cities
• BBC News: Rochester loses city statuscy:Rhestr dinasoedd y Deyrnas Unedig

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