Rolls-Royce worker Chris Yewdall has won one of the UK's most prestigious awards for engineering undergraduates, the Sir Frank Whittle Award.

Chris, 25, who lives in Colne, was singled out as the best from a bumper entry from students at the North West's eight universities.

Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovation presented the winner's award. He said: "I am very pleased to be presenting this year's Sir Frank Whittle Award.

"The ingenuity and calibre displayed by the applicants, and the winner in particular, is very impressive.

"It is vital that the UK continues to have world-class engineers, and remains at the leading edge of the aerospace and other engineering-based industries."

Chris, a product of the engineering apprenticeship programme, has worked his way up the career ladder, serving his time as a skilled engineer before embarking on university studies which led to his current position with Rolls-Royce at Barnoldswick.

Chris, who studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, met the 'boss' at the awards ceremony where Hedley Hazell, managing director of Fan Systems at Rolls-Royce presented the trophy, which is converted from one of Rolls-Royce's renowned wide-chord fan blades.

Mr Hazell said: "It is always a pleasure to mark Whittle's achievements in this way and we are doubly delighted this year to be honouring one of our own and someone who has worked extremely hard to succeed."

The competition is organised by the Nelson-based North West Aerospace Alliance. Chairman Dennis Mendoros, who chaired the judging panel, said: "When we launched this award four years ago, we were concerned that not enough young talent was being attracted into engineering and into the aerospace sector in particular.

"However, we are seeing much more interest among young people in becoming engineers and the quality of the entries we are now receiving for the awards is excellent."