PART of Nelson Square was cordoned off this morning as emergency services dealt with a large 'fire' in the town centre.

Eight fire engines and a command support unit were mobilised to Level Nightclub after reports of a 'blaze' — but there was no need for alarm.

For crews from across Bolton and Greater Manchester took part in a large scale exercise to hone and enhance their firefighting skills.

Chris Wilcox, Crew Manager of Red Watch at Bolton Central Fire Station, organised the fire training exercise — which was designed to be as realistic as possible.

In the exercise, firefighters were faced with a large scale 'fire' which 'broke' out the first floor with a number of staff and clubbers still inside.

The exercise — which ran from 9am to just before 11am — started with a fire alarm going off in the building, with more fire engines being deployed as the scenario developed.

Forty firefighters "tackled" it at its height.

And to test firefighters' search and rescue skills, the people 'trapped' inside were told not to escape via the fire exits. Nine people — played by staff and volunteers — were brought out of the building.

"Level Nightclub were good enough to let us use their building for the exercise. There is no risk at Level Nightclub and they allowed us use their building because it is quite a complicated building," said Mr Wilcox.

He added: "We make exercises as realistic as possible with club smoke filling the building which reduced visibility for the firefighters so they couldn't see a thing.

"Fire control were involved in the exercise, and we had Station Managers on the scene."

Mr Wilcox said: "Fire crews constantly practise their skills, we are training constantly. We hold small scale exercises and large scale ones like this one to develop their effectiveness at incidents and to be able to do something like this is really important.

"This exercise went well, we will go back and talk about what we did well and what we can improve on."

Managers at Level say they work closely with the emergency services and other members of the night-time economy to promote customer safety.

Area manager of Level Nightclub John Wood played a part in the exercise.

He said: "The staff who received positive feedback and it was really interested to see the exercise."