A regional daily journalist says he is “surprised and delighted” to have been mentioned in Parliament after his investigation into a school catchment area scandal.

Joel Adams, local government and politics reporter at Brighton daily The Argus, was praised in the House of Commons by Maria Caulfield, Conservative MP for Lewes, in a debate on schools.

The Argus was able to help 38 children, who had missed out on places at their preferred schools, to go to the school of their choice after pressing the authority to spend part of a “buried” £15m trove to enable them to do so.

Joel told HTFP he was “surprised and delighted” to have been mentioned by Ms Caulfield for his work on the “complex evolving story”.

He said: “I got a tip from a private source that £15m earmarked for a now-unneeded school had been buried in a council report. I found it on line 30 of a 40-line spreadsheet on page 135 of a 240 page agenda.

“I asked the outgoing council leader about it and he acknowledged it’d be spent on existing schools. We splashed on that, and a group of parents whose children had missed out on places at catchment-area schools asked that some be spent immediately on temporary buildings. I went to the council for comment and they said no.

“So I asked opposition parties, who moved a motion to make it happen, and two days later there was a cross-party resolution and 38 children will now be able to go to school with their friends and don’t face an hour-long commute across the city.

“I’m really proud of what The Argus was able to achieve working alongside parents and politicians. It was a good week.”

In the Commons, Ms Caulfield had said: “Brighton and Hove council has had issues taking in more children. But when the Brighton Argus investigated this, and reporter Joel Adams did an expose, they were telling parents they had no money and couldn’t accommodate these children and it was all down to government cuts.

“When the Argus investigated they found the Government had given the council £15 million to deal with the problem to build new classrooms and the Labour council had refused to spend it.”