A 20-year-old woman's dream of becoming a nurse has been shattered because she must give up her promised student digs to a foreign nurse.

Rachel Simcock, of Cononley, near Skipton, was due to start a three-year nurses course at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, on September 23.

But she has just been told she cannot occupy the £22 a week room she was promised by Manchester University.

It is to be let to a qualified nurse from Europe that the South Manchester NHS trust has recruited to help fill a desperate shortage on the hospital wards.

Rachel, who has given her notice to bosses at Home Loan Management, Skipton, says she can no longer afford to take up the course, during which time she will have to live on a £5,000 a year bursary. She said: "I had been accepted to have a room over the road from the hospital and everything seemed fine. Then I got this letter which said the room was needed for foreign nurses. I felt really let down. I looked elsewhere and the cheapest I could find was £60 a week and I would have had to share with someone else and the bathroom would have been used by 12 people.

"If I wanted my own room with a bathroom that was £90 a week."

Student flats were £40 a week but were only available for the academic year, but her course ran throughout the year.

"All my plans are in tatters. I can't even take up a similar course in Leeds or Bradford because I had to forfeit them when I accepted Manchester."

The letter from the nursing faculty said: "We have been informed by South Manchester that it will not be able to provide accommodation for student nurses this September due to the severe pressure it is experiencing in resourcing wards with qualified staff and the recruitment of staff from Europe to meet demand." Rachel added: "I think the whole thing is a joke."

She said her only solution now was to turn the Manchester offer down and re-apply to start in Leeds next April or September. The trust's decision also affects 15 other trainee nurses.

Ruth Holt, chief nurse at the Wythenshawe Hospital, said the limited residential accommodation owned by the trust was used by people who had on-call commitments and needed to be on site. We endeavour to find accommodation for student nurses through our arrangements with a local housing association, however, this is not always possible.

"Anyone seeking accommodation through the trust would be assisted by our accommodation office and given details of local housing associations and other providers of private accommodation."