Wrexham: City status mythbusting with business leader

Ruth Rees, chair of Wrexham Business Group CIC and co-owner of Martin Rees Jewellers in the town centre, has shared her thoughts following the announcement that Wrexham had been awarded the status.

She explained: "I’ve lived and worked in Wrexham most of my life. 

"It’s my home and I absolutely love it, and it’s people. 

READ MORE: Wrexham is awarded city status

"I just want to share the result of some checking I’ve been doing, into all the different things people have been saying since our City Status was announced.

"This is just my personal take on it, my own thoughts after the research I’ve done. 

"I do know many people won’t agree with all the points I make - I hope we can agree to differ with no hard feelings."

“Only the people on the council executive board wanted it”

• In fact, a lot of Wrexham’s top employers and organisations, and professional people such as lawyers, accountants etc, have been in favour of us trying for city status, for a long time! I took quite a while to be convinced, myself, that it was a good idea, but now we have it, I’m pleased and proud of the honour, which pays tribute to the vital role Wrexham plays in this whole area of the country.

 Wrexham
 

“Councillors’ pay will go up now”

• The councillors’ pay is set every three years by an independent review panel, for all Welsh councils, county, town and city alike. The panel considers lots of different factors but whether a place is a city or not, is irrelevant.

“It will cost a lot to rename all the Council vehicles, etc”

• The council name doesn’t have to be changed, and as our county includes lots of rural areas, it seems unlikely that it will be! So no costs for that. And the website for the applications did say “The Government does not want local authorities to incur any undue expense by entering the competition”

“We will have to pay higher council tax”

• As having City Status doesn’t involve any significant costs for the council, there’s no reason it should affect our Council Tax - that might well go up for other reasons, but it won’t be because we are now a city.

 Ruth Rees (Image: Ruth Rees)
 

“Prices will rise, things will cost the same as Chester, or even London”

• Shop prices, insurance, business rent and rates - loads of factors affect them, including the prosperity of the surrounding area. Prices could be much lower in a deprived inner-city area, than in a prosperous town with lots of folk in a high income bracket! So again I don’t believe this is something we need to worry about.

“We’ve lost our identity as a market town”

• We won’t stop being a market town, or stop being the special unique place we’ve always been, just because we’ve gained this added title. (Come to that, cities often have great markets, just as much as towns do!) My friend Pete Humphreys of Yellow and Blue Community Hub summarised it when he coined the phrase, “A city with a town at its heart.”