CIVIL servants took part in a training exercise designed to test Bolton Council's response to a major incident.

The drill was part of a week of mock activities called Exercise Triton II that culminate today in a day-long scenario designed to replicate a real-life disaster.

Bolton Council played out a pretend flash flooding plot yesterday in which an 'emergency control centre' was established in the town centre. A fake emergency rest centre was also opened at Bolton School's Scout hut off Chorley New Road, Heaton, where members of staff played displaced residents.

A council spokeswoman said: "Exercises like this are very important to make sure that the council and other local authorities and emergency services are prepared to deal with a real-life event or disaster.

"Using a flooding incident as the basis for our scenario today allowed us to implement what we have learnt from the floods in the borough in December 2015, as well as planning for any incidents like this in the future.”

Bolton Council and more than 25 local authorities, emergency services and other agencies such as Mountain Rescue, will participate in Exercise Triton II.

Dovestone Reservoir in Oldham and Hollingworth Lake in Rochdale will stage the large scale 10am-to-10pm finale with Chinook helicopters.

All week, the Macron Stadium's car park in Horwich has functioned as a meeting point for vehicles taking part in the various exercises.