THE Citizens Advice Project has won a national award.

It is part of the University of Sussex law department’s Clinical Legal Education programme.

It scooped the Advice Project of the Year award at the Citizens Advice annual conference.

The project is a collaboration with Citizens Advice in Central and South Sussex.

The award-winners were announced at an evening ceremony at Manchester Central.

The project sees University of Sussex law students undergoing intensive training with the charity, and then advising their clients on a range of legal issues, such as housing, welfare and family law.

In the last academic year, 722 people were helped at the Citizens Advice clinic.

Of those, 532 were complex cases.

Dora Castro, a University of Sussex student volunteer at a Citizens Advice in Crawley, who received dedicated training with them through the university’s project, said: “Working for Citizen Advice has been a great experience.”