FIREFIGHTERS rushed to an Oxford tower block this afternoon after a fire broke out in the ground floor storage area.

Six crews and an aerial platform were called out to Plowman Tower, in Westlands Drive, at 12.26pm.

Smoke was billowing from the entrance to the ground floor store area.

Two crew entered the store area using firefighting jets to extinguish the blaze and stopped it from spreading to the main part of the building.

Incident Commander, Group Manager Paul Bremble, said: “The crews were quick to extinguish the fire and stop it from spreading to other parts of the building.

"The store is situated at the ground floor of the tower and does not have direct access to the main part of the building.

"The construction of the store is designed to stop the spread of the fire to other parts of the building.

"There was no risk to residents during the incident and no spread of the smoke or the fire to the flats above."

“Thankfully no one was hurt at the incident and our crews are working with Thames Valley Police to ascertain the cause of the fire.”

Head of housing at Oxford City Council Stephen Clarke said in light of the tragedy at Grenfell Tower everyone was rightly concerned about fires in tower blocks.

He added: "Today’s small fire, and the textbook response to it, shows that the safeguards in place in Oxford work well.

“We are very grateful to the firefighters for their speedy and successful response, and are reinforced that we were right a couple of years ago to decide to go above and beyond national fire safety standards in our £20 million refurbishment programme for all five Oxford tower blocks.

“The comprehensive fire measures we decided on included fitting sprinklers – which Oxfordshire’s Chief Fire Officer has confirmed puts our blocks amongst only 18 in the country with sprinklers, out of around 600 blocks in total.”

Police were also on scene to help control the traffic around the blaze.