A teenage girl was told she could not apply for a training programme with the Environment Agency because she is not part of an ethnic minority.

Abigail Howarth, 18, from Little Staughton, was told that there was no point in submitting an application for the position with its flood management scheme because she was white and English.

If she had been white and Welsh, Scottish or Irish, there would not have been a problem.

The Environment Agency advert itself did not mention that white English candidates could not apply – only that people from Asian, Indian, African, Caribbean and white Irish, Welsh, Scottish and European backgrounds were encouraged.

It was only when Abigail emailed the agency handling applications, PATH National Ltd, that she was told by the organisation's recruitment officer Bola Odusi that: "Unfortunately the traineeship opportunity in Brampton is targeted towards the ethnic minority group to address their under representations in the professions under the Race Relations Act amended 2000."

Abigail, who went to Sharnbrook Community College, said: "I did not want to go to university, I wanted to get out there, get stuck in, learn on the job and it was only ten miles away in Brampton.

"It was something I was desperately looking forward to, and to be told I could not even apply is ludicrous.

"I do not know whether I would have got on the training programme, but I never even had the chance to apply.

"It should be done on merit and qualifications, not where you are from."

North-East Bedfordshire Conservative MP Alistair Burt said: "I think it is an outrage and I do not see how a decision like this can do anything for community relations. I heard about it and thought crikey, this is bad, and I will be taking up the case with the Department of Work and Pensions and the Environment Agency.

"If Abigail had been black or Muslim, the Environment Agency and PATH would have been in real trouble."

Race relations expert Gerald Hartup, from legal firm Liberty and Law, said: "If it had been a job application they could not have discriminated in this way, but because it is a four-year traineeship they have used the Race Relations Act. It's shocking and wrong."

A spokesperson for PATH said "Abigail has been encouraged by the Environment Agency to apply for other traineeships they offer."

But Miss Howarth is adamant that no suggestion was made, and there were no other positions other than in engineering, which she is not qualified for.

A spokesman for the Environment Agency said 387 of its 12,000 workers claim black or ethnic minority status, but admitted it had no evidence that white Scottish, Irish or Welsh were under represented in the Anglian region.