The fire service arrived at the Bolton town centre Halifax bank just after noon today, Wednesday, and the building was evacuated after the ground floor filled with smoke.

First responders said that it was because of a fault with the heating system at the Knowsley Street branch.

Three fire engines were sent to deal with the incident.

The building had to be evacuatedThe building had to be evacuated (Image: Newsquest) Fire and rescue service watch manager, Dan Martin, said: “It’s quite simple. All it was is just basically the heating system has been off through the summer and as we come on to switch on because it’s getting colder now.

“There’s obviously a lot of dirt in the system so when they turned it on, it heated up and kicked out a load of smoke which started to fill the ground floor of the bank.

“So yeah we’ve isolated everything, we’ve vented the smoke and I’m gonna hand it over to the engineers here to deal with the rest of it.”

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Siraj Patel, a senior staff member at Halifax, said at about 12.15pm that the bank would be closed for half an hour to an hour.

Siraj Patel, senior colleague at Halifax bankSiraj Patel, senior colleague at Halifax bank (Image: Newsquest) He said: "It was just a bit of an overheat that's all.

"Basically our heating system wasn't working so we had an engineer come in, he had a look at this switch then went to go and get his ladders.

"As he went out, smoke started to come out so we evacuated the building.

"Not surprising, it happens with electrical stuff. Our heating was off from Tuesday morning so he came to fix it.

"Short circuit, anything like that, we don't know.

"It's the first time [this has happened]. I've been here 24 years and it's the first time we've had to evacuate."