Bournemouth

[apex204]

Town or city? Officially, that is...

[THECORBYLOON]

It is not a city and the council is a Borough Council.

[Buenchico]

Just to confirm the previous answer, here's a complete list of all UK cities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Status_in_th e_UK

Chris

[robbo82]

...and here's a list of the largest towns without city status:

http://www.lovemytown.co.uk/CityStatus/CityStatusTable2.htm

[netibiza]

Can only be a city if it has a cathedral.

[Buenchico]

For Netibiza:
A city has to have a royal charter granting it city status. Also, it will cease to be a city if it fails to comply with the requirements of that charter.

For many years, charters granting city status were only granted to towns with cathedrals but some towns with cathedrals (e.g. Bury St Edmunds) were never granted city status. In more recent times, city status has been awarded to towns both with and without cathedrals.

The only recent case of a city failing to meet its obligations under its charter occurred a few years ago when Rochester failed to appoint trustees. It took several years before anyone noticed that Rochester is no longer a city but simply a town!

There's a great deal more information on that link I posted above.

Chris

PS: The above refers to the legal definition of a city, which is not to be confused with the more general sense of the word 'city'. For example, most people would agree that London is a city. Officially, however, it contains two cities (the City of London and the City of Westminster) but it is not, in itself, a city.

[CheekyChops]

For netibiza, I can't be bothered to read Buenchico's lengthy answer but I live in Stoke on Trent, we are a city and most definately don't have a cathedral.

[netibiza]

This is the trouble with the world today "the old order changeth yielding place to new......" laws, places everything is changing.

[jno]

... and people nowadays have such short attention spans that they can't get through Buenchico's knowledgeable and helpful posts. Shame!

[statsfan]

Buenchico your answer is almost correct but has a few inaccuracies.

A town is given Letters Patent (Open Letter) granting it city status NOT a royal charter. Being an open letter there are no requirements stipulated to which that city has to comply. The only rule is any city which loses it's council has to re-apply either via the new council or appoint Charter Trustees for the area that used to be covered by the old City Council.

Rochester did lose city status in 1998 when it merged with Gillingham Council to form Medway Council. The Government told Medway Councillors to appoint Charter Trustees if they wanted to maintain city status for Rochester. They turned down this time-limited offer and, as far back as 2000, I tried to tell the Councillors they had lost city status but they did not respond until the City of Rochester Society discovered the fact a little later.

Interestingly Medway Council has applied city status for itself (not only Rochester) in 2000 and 2002.