CREWE has joined a raft of towns making applications for city status under a competition launched to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.

Three new cities are to be designated in 2022 and councils are preparing their cases for status in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Civic Awards.

Crewe Town Council is set to make an application under the scheme before the deadline on December 8, but is likely to face stiff competition from larger towns like Warrington and the likes of Reading, Middlesbrough and Swindon, the latter trio previously failing with city bids.

Those applications came at a cost. Preston's successful bid to become a city was reported as costing around £30,000, and that was in 2002.

But the Queen's awards are a free to enter Civic Honours competition, so could attract many more towns than have previously sought the honour.

Town Mayor Tom Dunlop says the bid will help raise Crewe's profile.

"The jubilee celebrations have presented us with a rare opportunity to submit an application on behalf of Crewe that identifies the ambition for Crewe to be recognised for its high-growth status as well as it strategic importance locally and now nationally thanks to HS2 and the internationally successful businesses who have chosen Crewe as their home, such as Bentley, Bombardier and AO," said Cllr Dunlop.

"Putting Crewe forward in this competition for city status raises Crewe's profile on a national stage and is an opportunity that we would not normally be able to take advantage of."

In population terms Crewe may be dwarfed by competitors. Its current population is 71,000. Warrington's is over 210,000.

Northampton - whose councillors are to decide whether to make a bid next month - is one of the largest towns in England with a population of 224,000.

But the town council believes it would be amiss not to make an application; the bid requires only the "filling of a simple form".

The government says it does not want local councils to incur "undue expense" entering and it will be "the quality of the contents of the application, taken as a whole, that will be assessed, rather than the standards of presentation".

With the hope that government funding from the Towns Fund and Future High Streets Fund could help transform the town in the coming years, along with a request made recently to Cheshire East Council to prepare a bid to host the headquarters of new rail network operators Great British Railways, a bid for city status could tap into the positive mood of progress.