A council official suggested manipulating a public consultation on school admissions to achieve the best result for the authority, The Argus has learned.

Brighton and Hove City Council is considering changing its policy on the controversial issue of admissions.

This leaves hundreds of parents without their first choice of school for their children.

A report to the council's admissions working group, seen by The Argus, suggests consulting parents in focus groups so the council could "be seen to consult but to really just secure the result that has been pre-determined by the powers-that-be".

The unnamed official favoured groups made up of "interested and informed" parents who were more likely to agree with the proposal to change the admissions system.

Parents last night said the report undermined the council's impartiality.

James Simister, of the Brighton and Hove Schools' Action Group, said: "This confirms my suspicions this is not a genuine consultation process.

"People have very little confidence in the impartiality of the council and I hoped this process would be more open and transparent. I would like to know who briefed the consultation department.

"If it is just a totally meaningless piece of paper why has taxpayers' money been wasted on it?"

In the past parents in east Brighton and central Hove have complained that the authority's policy of prioritising the parents who live nearest the most popular schools is unfair.

Last year the council proposed selecting pupils for Dorothy Stringer based on how close they lived to The Level, a central Brighton location about two miles from the school.

It also suggested that half of applications for Blatchington Mill in Hove could be prioritised according to how close pupils lived to Sussex County Cricket Ground, also two miles away.

But parents who returned consultation forms rejected the proposals - leading to the suggestion that focus groups would be preferable.

Dorothy Stringer headteacher Trevor Allen told The Argus: "It would seem that the council is trying to pre-determine the outcome of the consultation."

He said the report risked undermining any future consultations by the council.

The council has admitted the report's author acted beyond his brief and he has been asked to redraft the report.

Gil Sweetenham, the assistant director for education, said: "We are still looking at all the options. Everything is still up for grabs.

"There was some confusion about what the officer was tasked to do."

He said the council was scrapping postal consultation because only a minority of families were unfairly treated by the current system and a city-wide consultation of all parents would inevitably produce a vote to keep things as they are.

He said a new report was to be presented to the working group tonight.

Paul Grivell is from CAUSE4EB, a group of east Brighton parents lobbying to change the system.

He said: "I do think the council's intentions over this were good. Often it's incompetence that means they screw it up. It probably was just one man who got the wrong end of the stick but that doesn't excuse it."