I live in Montefiore Road, Hove, so will effectively have no choice of local secondary school for my children if the current "distance only" criterion is not changed.

On Tuesday, I attended the last scheduled public consultation meeting held as part of the ongoing secondary admissions review at Hove Town Hall.

The general feeling of these meetings has been that we believe Gil Sweetenham and the working group are acting in good faith to come up with a better alternative to the iniquitous, discredited policy which has been in place since September 2004.

The Children Families Schools (CFS) Committee will decide any change in the policy. The main fear for many affected parents is that members of the CFS will not vote on the merits of any new policy but rather in the way to best please the people of the wards they represent.

It was therefore heartening to hear Councillor Pat Hawkes (chair of CFS) stand up and say publicly she would "almost certainly" vote for any changed policy which is recommended by the working group.

This is "almost" exactly what we want to hear - obviously, "certainly" would have been better still.

I would urge anyone negatively affected by the current policy to concentrate on persuading members of the CFS committee to vote for fairness for all the children in the city come November 2006 and not to vote for the status quo in order to please voters in their own ward.

-Chris Bourne, Hove