ENTREPRENEURIAL flair among university students in York has been recognised and rewarded at an awards event to celebrate early stage businesses.

The University of York's Plan Envy scheme supports enterprising students who are starting their own businesses while studying.

This week the programme hosted its annual awards night, in which five shortlisted students were invited to present their business plans for a chance of winning cash prizes.

Supported by Santander Universities, the Plan Envy awards presented £2000 for the best overall plan and concept, with £500 given for both the most robust plan and the most innovative plan.

Hosted at the Ron Cooke Hub, the evening saw Alex Woolley win both the overall plan and concept award and the most innovative plan award for his business Hashtrack.

Mr Woolley, who studies computer science, has developed a software package for marketing agencies to track hashtags online for branding campaigns, with trails already underway with six companies.

Winning the most robust plan prize was Bethan Vincent with her venture Vincent's Coffee, specialising in ethically sourced coffee for retail.

Also presenting on the evening was Hiba Kahn with her health boot camp for children business Active Minds, George Frest with his business Crowd Restoration which seeks to use crowd funding to raise money for historic building restoration, and Alex Kontos who launched his own web browser Waterfox, which has reached more than three million users, attracting more than 50,000 new users every month.