The woman responsible for comments on a council document which suggested a public consultation on school admissions would be manipulated has come forward.

Siobhan McAlinden said a damning line was left in a report she annotated by mistake and was never meant to be made public.

Ms McAlinden has now resigned from her position on the parent stakeholder group which was being consulted on possible changes to school admissions criteria.

But she says she remains sceptical about future public consultations by Brighton and Hove City Council, although the authority insists consultation will simply be done in a different way.

The report to the council's working group suggested consulting parents in focus groups so the council could - in the words of Ms McAlinden - be "seen to consult but to really just secure the result that has been predetermined by the powers-that-be".

Ms McAlinden, who lives near Preston Park and has a nine-year-old daughter at Westdene Primary School, said the line was one of many comments she added to the original document and emailed to friends to voice her concerns.

She then sent what she thought was a "clean" copy of the report to other people but failed to delete the criticism. She said: "It was never intended as a malicious comment to attack the council but was a genuine error."

The original document suggested consulting parents on ways of implementing change rather than on what changes they would prefer. It suggested scrapping a postal vote in favour of public meetings and focus groups. It talked about the "risk" of consulting parents on their preferences as they could opt for no change.

Gil Sweetenham, the council's assistant director for schools, said the officer responsible for the report was told to redraft the document, looking specifically at holding focus groups.

He said the working group was looking at all options for school admissions criteria and would present several ideas to people at public meetings later this month.