INVERCLYDE Council's bold bid to win city status for Greenock has ended in failure.

Scotland’s newest and eighth city will be Dunfermline, which won the big competition arranged as part of the celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.

The Fife bid was successful along with bids from England, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Falkland Islands.

The competition drew entries from 38 places all over the Commonwealth.

The other winners, announced on Friday morning, are Bangor in Northern Ireland, Colchester, Doncaster and Milton Keynes, all in England, Douglas on the Isle of Man, Stanley on the Falkland Islands and Wrexham in Wales

Inverclyde Council leader Stephen McCabe said: “Congratulations to Dunfermline in becoming Scotland’s eighth city.

"While it is natural for us to be disappointed that Greenock hasn’t been granted city status in this competition to mark the platinum jubilee it is good that Inverclyde’s largest town has been in the running for this prestigious honour."

The city bid attracted public controversy when it was launched last year.

Inverclyde Council ran a survey to gauge opinion and it found that 61 per cent of people were not in favour.

Almost two thirds said they didn't believe that city status would help boost Greenock's population.

Those surveyed were split down the middle about the promised benefits of the town having a seat at the Scottish Cities Alliance.

Some participants said that they felt Greenock was a town rather than a city and that more needed to be done to improve it and address social issues before any city bid was submitted.

People also expressed concerns about the costs of the application and the possibility that it might divert resources from other services.

However, local authority officials said the application process had no direct costs, due to the small size of the documentation required.

Mr McCabe said: "The last council voted unanimously to support a bid which showed ambition for the future of Greenock.

"As a new council is formed to deliver services over the next five years the challenge is to keep working together to maintain that ambitious collective drive moving forward.

"Doing that and facing the undoubted challenges head on we can make sure that if Greenock can’t be a city this time it will continue to be one of Scotland’s great towns.”