A daily newspaper’s campaign to have the remains of King Richard III buried in its local cathedral has reached another milestone after its online petition hit 30,000 signatures.

The Leicester Mercury has been backing an online government epetition supporting the city’s claim to be the rightful resting place of the King whose body was discovered under one of the council’s car parks in August last year.

It was originally launched by Mercury reader Roy Shakespeare in response to a bid by campaigners in York to overturn plans to re-inter Richard’s remains in Leicester Cathedral and bury him in the North Yorkshire city instead.

As HTFP reported in September, the number of signatures soared past 20,000 in just a few days when the Local World paper threw its weight behind the campaign.

The number of people to have signed the petition, which closes on 12 October, currently stands at 30,562 which is just short of a rival petition by the Plantagenet Alliance which had 31,276 declarations of support when it closed on 24 September.