Published: Thursday, 21st January, 2010 10:00am

The City of Reading?

by Adam Hewitt

Comments (0) | Print | Email

MANY businesses and visitors already see Reading as a city - but the town is having another try at getting formal recognition.

Council leader Jo Lovelock wants cross-party support for the bid to 'upgrade' the town during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. She has asked the other parties to help form a City Status Partnership Board to get the bid rolling.

Reading bid for city status but missed out in the Millennium celebrations in 2000 to Brighton, Wolverhampton and Inverness, and again in the 2002 Golden Jubilee competition to Preston.

A short-lived effort to ignore the formalities and brand Reading as a city anyway was abandoned.

Councillors will vote on the idea at a council meeting on Tuesday, January 26.