London firefighters battle blaze minutes from evacuated unsafe estate

Fire at London apartment block. Photo/Twitter/@HeatheryDoune

Dozens of London firefighters have battled a blaze at a block of flats neighbouring an estate that was evacuated over unsafe cladding.

Nearly 60 firefighters attended the building at Waxham House in Camden, only a few minutes drive from Chalcots Estate, a collection of residential buildings which was evacuated last week following urgent checks that followed the Grenfell Tower disaster.

The London Fire Brigade tweeted overnight they had nearly 60 firefighters attending the Camden unit fire that saw the block become engulfed in flames.

Dramatic footage shared from the scene shows smoke billowing from the building's second storey as fire engines line that street.

Fire crews managed to contain the blaze and the fire brigade tweeted the fire was under control by 10pm.

The block of flats is just over 2.5km from Chalcots estate, where thousands of people were asked to evacuate last week after it emerged the building were coated in the same deadly cladding that it is believed helped the fire to spread at shocking speed in the Grenfell Tower inferno that is presumed to have killed 79 people.

On Sunday the government announced 60 high rise building had failed safety tests.