SCHEMES to help people who are missing out on benefits and to bring locally-produced food closer to the consumer have gained top awards for business-minded York students.

Teams from the city's university took both the £10,000 top prize and a £1,000 runners-up award in The White Rose Centre for Enterprise (WRCE) annual Business Plan Competition.

The competition is open to students and recent graduates from the universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield.

They have to develop an original business idea, but get support along the way from business development staff.

CitizenDirect, this year's winning team from York, presented a business idea intended to help identify those people who are missing out on claiming means-tested benefits.

Paul Dornan, 24, a final year PhD student, and John Hudson, a lecturer, both in the department of social policy and social work, said: "It will market a service that uses sophisticated modelling techniques to isolate who is most likely to be missing out on their benefits, and use private and public data to target them more effectively with information about their rights."

The Love of Food team were awarded a runners-up prize of £1,000-worth of mentoring support. Jason Schweiger, 22, who has just graduated with a MChem degree, said the team's idea was driven by the growing market for high quality, locally-produced, and traceable food. He said: "The Love Of Food concept is centred upon a friendly, fully-integrated, and local service whereby the consumer can confidently achieve a one-stop-shop for produce that falls under this banner, and have it delivered to their door by a professional and customer-focused team."

Updated: 10:37 Tuesday, August 05, 2003