Memorandum from the City of Rochester Society on Medway Council's proposal to apply for city status |
Background |
Rochester's historic city status was allowed to lapse when Medway Unitary Authority was formed.Since this decision was discovered, the City of Rochester Society has been investigating whether, and if so how, city status can be regained. Medway Council has also endeavoured to reverse the decision made by its predecessors, making approaches to central government's Constitution Unit, so far without success. Now, in anticipation that new cities may be created as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, Medway Council has announced its intention of making an application in respect of the entire borough which, if successful, would become the City of Medway. The Society's findings For centuries it was accepted that a town which was the seat of a bishopric, and so contained a cathedral, would have the status of a city. This stemmed from the fact that the earliest bishoprics were settled upon the most important and well-established towns in the kingdom, usually those of Roman or pre-Roman origin.There are no records of city status having been formally bestowed upon these towns at any time, though their status was accepted and reaffirmed by Royal charters through the centuries. In the course of a local government review in 1927 these towns, including Rochester, were described as cities 'by ancient prescriptive right'. In addition to these historic cities, large new industrial towns developed in the 19th century some of which sought, and were granted, city status. Other towns became the seats of newly created bishoprics and cathedrals were built (e.g. in Guildford and Chelmsford) but as yet they do not have city status. The automatic link between city and diocese was broken. Local government boundary changes in the 1970s created a requirement to maintain the status for cities which were being incorporated into the newly formed, larger districts. Initially Rochester's status was upheld by 'Special Letters Patent' granted by the Queen at the request of the outgoing city council. When, in 1982, Medway Borough Council expressed an interest in obtaining city status for itself, a compromise was reached with a name change to Rochester upon Medway. A further application was then made to the Queen and Rochester's historic status was extended to the whole of the Borough. However, when the unitary authority was formed in 1997 Rochester was not included in the title and no other action was taken - such as the appointment of charter trustees - to uphold city status. City status is granted very sparingly and there are no hard and fast rules; applicants have to make the best case they can citing the attributes of their particular town or, in some cases, group of towns (e.g. Stoke on Trent, a city of six towns). The one fact, however, which does emerge is that city status has,to date, only been granted in the name of established towns. Unless there is a change of policy, it is unlikely that city status would be granted under a name otherwise borne only by a river and a recently created local government district, such as Medway. It is also worth bearing in mind that the Yorkshire city generally known as Hull has the formal title of the City of Kingston-upon-Hull. This suggests that if a formal title of, say, Rochester upon Medway, were adopted for the Authority itself - upon which an application for city status could be based - there would be nothing to preclude the continued marketing/promotion of the area as 'Medway' in line with the Council's existing policy. The Society's recommendation The Society strongly recommends that in order to give an application for city status the best possible chance of success, the Council considers altering the name of the Unitary Authority to 'ROCHESTER UPON MEDWAY'. |
