A BUSINESSMAN is urging companies to sponsor local students through university.

Simon Bailes, managing director of the North-East car dealership of the same name, offers a scholarship for a girl every year to attend Polam Hall School, in Darlington, and believes a similar model could help relieve the pressures of funding a student through university.

Under government plans, only families with an income under £10,000 - seven per cent of the population - will be eligible for full grants of £1,000 towards the cost.

Mr Bailes said: "If businesses can afford to budget for one student to attend university on a scholarship each year, it will open higher education to all students, so that it is not only the well-off who can afford to send their children to study."

He said businesses could invest in their workforces by having the student pledge themselves to the company for an agreed amount of time after finishing their degree.