City Status in The United Kingdom - City Status Conferment

City Status Conferment

City status is conferred by letters patent and not by a royal charter (except historically in Ireland). There are twenty towns in England and Wales that were recognised as cities by "ancient prescriptive right"; none of these communities had been formally declared a city, but they had all used the title since "time immemorial", that is, prior to 3 September 1189.

The holding of city status brings no special benefits other than the right to be called a city. All cities where a local government unit that holds that status is abolished have to be re-issued with letters patent reconfirming city status following local government reorganisation where that holder has been abolished. This process was followed by a number of cities since 1974, and York and Hereford's status was confirmed twice, in 1974 and again in the 1990s. Failure to do so leads to the loss of city status as happened at Rochester in 1998 (see above), and also previously in St David's and Armagh, although both of these latter have regained city status since losing it. All three of these had been cities since time immemorial before the loss of city status.

Charters originated as charters of incorporation, allowing a town to become an incorporated borough, or to hold markets. Some of these charters recognised officially that the town involved was a city. Apart from that 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 received charters in 1189.

The formal definition of a city has been disputed, in particular by inhabitants of towns that have been regarded as 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.