Football's coming home - or at least that's the dream of a Guiseley design consultancy which has today scored a major victory after being selected to prepare the FA's bid for England to host the 2006 World Cup.

Forty years after England's triumph in the 1966 championships, Elmwood Design hopes to be seeing the most famous event in the footballing calendar brought back here as a result of its own key performance.

Success in this challenge will be worth billions of pounds to the British economy.

The project, which must be completed by September 1999, will target FIFA's international, 24-member committee, the body which will vote in June 2000 for the country it deems the most suitable to be the host venue.

Elmwood's brief is to design and develop the formal bid document to be submitted to FIFA to persuade it that England is the best choice for 2006.

The Guiseley consultancy, which has worked in the past for Asda and ICI, beat off stiff competition from 30 firms, mostly in London, to be the one to pitch England's bid against those from Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Australia.

Simon Preece, director of Elmwood's 2006 Bid Team, said: "This is fantastic news. We'll be putting together a full case study with a full justification as to why England should be chosen for 2006.

"FIFA will be publishing certain criteria which we will have to meet in the bid. The criteria will cover every aspect of hosting the World Cup, such as funding requirements, security, drug testing, stadia specifications, the amount of media seats available.

"It's a massive task but our job is to bring personality and passion to the bid and to bring it alive.

"We believe England is a fantastic place to present the World Cup. It's the home of football, it's got a great transport infrastructure and culture, and we want to make this so blindingly obvious to FIFA that they can't turn us down."

FIFA will inspect the bid documents next September before its representatives inspect each country pitching to host the Cup, making its final decision in June 2000.

Alec McGivan, bid director at the FA, said: "The production of an outstanding bid document is of paramount importance. We have a great case to make to FIFA and the document must reflect this excellence."

Elmwood had been chosen for its impressive track record and for its "great enthusiasm for the campaign".

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.