A Bromley healthcare worker is devastated after a job offer was allegedly withdrawn because of a 21-year-old “isolated” criminal conviction.

Michelle Mills, 50, says she was offered a healthcare assistant job at BMI Beckenham in March after impressing in her interview.

However, the private hospital has now withdrawn the offer apparently because of her previous brush with the law, despite her being honest about it in her application.

When studying as a student nurse in 1998 Miss Mills was convicted of GBH and handed a four-month suspended sentence.

“I was defending myself and was being strangled,” Miss Mills told News Shopper.

She added it was a domestic incident, which she was transparent about when applying for the job.

Since then she has completed her nursing training and has a decade of healthcare experience.

She said: “I worked in Lewisham Hospital for eight years. I am a good character and it was an isolated incident. It was a one-off.

“I have not even had a parking ticket since then. They shouldn’t have shortlisted me or brought me in for an interview if this was how they would treat me.”

Miss Mills says she accepted the job with BMI Beckenham in March and filled out the usual employment forms, but was left waiting for seven weeks for a start date, during which time she says she turned down other offers.

However, the healthcare assistant claims that when she called on May 18 to find out what was happening she was told the job offer was being retracted because of her past conviction.

“They have just wiped it from underneath my feet,” she said. “They shouldn’t be able to do that to people.

“They have made me feel like the scum of the earth. This is discrimination and I have proved myself to be a good person.”

Miss Mills is now jobless and believes seven weeks of her life have been wasted.

A spokesman for BMI Beckenham said: “Although we cannot comment on specific cases, we’d like to make it clear that patient safety is paramount in all our decisions.

“We carry out pre-employment risk assessments on previous convictions for preferred applicants, so that we can understand more fully any potential impact to our patients and other staff members. Any job offers are always made subject to satisfactory pre-employment checks.”