Pressures are piling up on Brighton and Hove's families and the various authorities out there seem not to care.

Aggressive parking policies and the prospect of extended drinking hours in residential inner-city streets are making us feel that it's time to get out.

But your story (The Argus, September 9) about poor Steve Don's anguish over his daughter's school placement brought back harrowing memories from 2003 for me, my wife and our daughter Hana.

Living in the centre of Brighton and Hove and choosing the two nearest secondary schools for which she qualified, we were amazed to be excluded from both, along with 11 other pupils living close to their junior school in Somerhill Road.

Instead, we were allocated Falmer (almost five miles away) and some others were destined for Comart.

Everyone appealed, under great pressure, and had to endure three months of anxiety and uncertainty. To the end, the authority insisted its proposal was right and proper but, thanks to an independent panel at the hearing, the authority lost its case and all the families' appeals were successful.

I was almost in tears when I read of Mr Don's sad end but when I saw he and his wife had been told less

disruption would be caused to their daughter by a daily journey to and from Falmer than would be caused by adding one extra pupil to a class in her preferred school, I became angry.

The authority seems so stuck in its politically-correct mindset that it appears not to understand that a class of 35 children who really want to be there will be less disruptive than a class of 29 who don't.

Blatchington Mill accepted Hana and her fellow pupils from Somerhill in 2003 and the school is very glad to have them because they really want to be there and it shows in their performance.

To Mr Don's daughter, I would say that the pressures of being a parent can sometimes be overwhelming but when she gets to Varndean, she'll have a chance to honour her Dad by enjoying her time there and doing really, really well.

-Sean Wood, Hove