Police are investigating after tower block residents fled when a large fire broke out in a flat.

Onlookers watched as flames could be seen from a balcony during the blaze in a 17-storey building in Kilburn Square yesterday (September 18) at 6.43pm.

Half of a flat on the 13th floor was alight and due to its visibility 78 people called the London Fire Brigade.

The brigade says there were no injuries reported as people fled their homes. The fire was under control by 8.09pm.

Brent Council said that it had set up a rest centre in Brent Civic Centre, Wembley, to take anyone in need of shelter.

Residents living from the first to 12th floors were told they could return to their homes.

However community social media page Life in Kilburn said that many evacuated were initially stuck in a McDonald's restaurant as the council pledged to send black cabs to transport them to Wembley.

According to Ivo Costa, who shared posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the scene, neighbours had claimed this was “not the first time” there had been a fire in the flat.

The incident also sparked concerns from the Kilburn Village Residents' Association, as chair Keith Anderson reached out to the paper to express his fear of "key fire safety issues" in future proposals for the estate.

This is a topic the Brent & Kilburn Times will investigate.

The cause of the fire is under investigation by the London Fire Brigade and the Metropolitan Police.