A parent said he would continue to lobby an education authority over its "unfair" school admissions criteria after it refused to apply for an emergency change in policy.

Mick Landmann is one of more than 1,000 parents in east Brighton who has signed a petition protesting at the way Brighton and Hove City Council selects children for oversubscribed schools.

Last year the city council changed its admissions criteria from priority areas which took into account travel routes and how easily children could get to other schools to a distance-only measure.

The closure of East Brighton College of Media Arts (Comart) in Wilson Avenue in July, means many families in east Brighton live too far away from many schools to fit the new criteria.

While the city council has agreed to review the change, any further amendments will be implemented in 2007 at the earliest, meaning parents of children going into Year 6 will be the second year group to lose out under the current system.

Mr Landmann hoped the council would agree to apply for an in-year variation - an emergency order which has to be approved by the schools adjudicator and would allow the council to make immediate changes to its admissions criteria.

The council wrote to the schools adjudicator last month asking for advice on the procedure but the adjudicator declined to comment and the council has now decided not to apply for the order.

Mr Landmann, who lives with his partner Diane Kirkland and their children Charlotte, ten, and Jamie, seven, in Freshfield Road, said: "We will continue to keep up pressure on the council over this. The in-year variation was really the only way to help the new Year 6s.

"If we don't get it, there is a good chance some parents will refuse to send their children to their allocated school."

A council spokesman said: "We are very aware of the concerns expressed by some parents in east Brighton about the current secondary school admissions criteria but we will not be making any in-year variations to them."

He said the council would need to demonstrate to the schools adjudicator that there has been a "serious and unexpected event" since the current rules have been in place.

This was not the case as the closure of Comart had already been decided when the current admissions arrangements were agreed in March 2004.

He said 90 per cent of parents were happy with the current system and that any change would affect other areas and so would be unreasonable without city-wide consultation.

The council has agreed to set up a "stakeholder" parents representation group to work with the review committee.