The riverside town is a diverse metropolitan hub with a rich medieval history, plays host to several international companies like Microsoft and Oracle, and even has its own university.
Reading’s failure to secure city status certainly isn’t for lack of trying, with the council making several unsuccessful bids to win city status over the years.
Arguments for why the town should be a city often point to its size, with the population of Reading’s greater urban area sitting at around 233,000.
The number of people living within the actual Reading borough boundary is smaller at just over 180,000 – but even that figure makes Reading bigger than cities like Bath, Cambridge, and Oxford.
Many people seem to think the town has been denied city status because it does not have its own cathedral, but having a cathedral is not actually a requirement to become a city.
Technically, the only reason Reading isn’t a city is simply because it doesn’t have a Royal Charter from the monarch.
This civic honour is usually bestowed via a Letters Patent gifted to mark a significant event in the royal calendar, like a Jubilee or Coronation.
Reading Borough Council made several attempts to win the civic honour from the late Queen Elizabeth II, launching unsuccessful bids in 2000, 2002, 2012, and mostly recently in 2022 when eight new UK cities were named in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
A spokesperson for Reading Borough Council told the Chronicle that the 2022 bid for city status was meant to boost the town’s economy by attracting further investment.
The spokesperson was quick to emphasise that the extra investment city status may have encouraged would have been adding to “what is already an extremely successful local economy”.
“From the council’s perspective,” they continued, “the aim was to use the bid to help open up new opportunities for residents, particularly in terms of new skills and training opportunities, which fits with the Council’s overall vision of maximising Reading’s potential to ensure that everyone living and working here can share the benefits of its success.”
In the end, the 2022 contest saw Reading beaten to the post by Dunfermline, Bangor, Douglas, Doncaster, Wrexham, Colchester, and nearby Milton Keynes.
The council spokesperson insisted the failed bid had still been “a good opportunity to showcase Reading and everything it has to offer”.
Whether city status could be on the cards for Reading sometime in the future is unclear, with the council spokesperson only offering the vague assurance that the council “will consider whether to bid again if and when future City Status opportunities arise”.