Despite boasting the most visited museum outside London, Bradford has again missed out to neighbour Leeds - this time for the right to be featured on a website celebrating England's cultural cities.

It is the second snub this week for Bradford after the Telegraph & Argus earlier revealed that millions of pounds of Government cash to regenerate the area would be given to a newly created "Leeds City Region".

And it is the favouring of Leeds by John Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister which has been a contributing factor in Bradford missing out on being featured in the new 24-hour museum website.

The editor of the website has apologised for missing out Bradford.

Jon Pratty said Bradford was not included in its featured top ten cities alongside the likes of Leeds, Liverpool and Bristol because it was not recommended. Mr Pratty said the website's creators made their choice on advice from Yorkshire's Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

But each year the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television expects in excess of 700,000 visitors. It opened in 1983 and hit its peak in 2000 when more than a million people passed through its doors.

Bosses at YMLA confirmed they had approved Leeds as the best choice and that they did not put Bradford forward. Jason Doherty, who is policy director for the YMLA, a regional agency working to boost the area's economy through culture, said there was no snub intended but Leeds was the obvious choice.

He said: "The 24-hour museum had already named Leeds in its bid for Government cash and they just asked us to confirm their selection was the right one - which we did. If they had asked us for our outright opinion we would have said Leeds anyway." He said Leeds was chosen because it was a core economic city already identified by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

And he added: "Leeds was the logical way to proceed but now everything is in place it should be relatively low cost to produce other city guides which will hopefully include Bradford. "

Meanwhile website editor Mr Pratty said: "I apologise we can't cover all the cities we would like to but this is just the beginning. We worked closely with the YMLA Council which guided us.

He added: "We are a smallish part of a big government on-line project and we don't have enough resources and funding to cover the whole of the country but we hope to get more money so we can get to other cities especially Bradford which has a fantastic diverse culture. We are very flattered that other cities want to be included."

The site promotes publicly-funded UK museums galleries and heritage attractions and seeks to develop new audiences for UK culture.

Bradford's tourism and marketing officer John Swinburn said he would be getting in touch with the website and the YMLA to ask them to bear the city in mind for next time.

"People are entitled to their choices but we'll be reminding them that Bradford has a national museum here and a world heritage site on its doorstep."

The new 24-hour city heritage guides give inside information on how visitors can get the most from ten cities around the country. The featured cities are Leeds, Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Gateshead and Norwich.

To visit the website log on to www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/cityheritage