It took a crew of more than 50 firefighters to extinguish the blaze, according to The Construction Index.

Footage captured by onlookers showed a construction worker trapped on the roof of the 17-storey tower, engulfed by acrid smoke, just managing to climb into a man-riding cage in time to be lowered to safety by the tower crane operator, amid whooping and cheering from the ground.

It turned out that a second person was also rescued in the same way. Sixty-five-year-old crane operator Glen Edwards, from Egham in Surrey, told the press: “It's not been your average day at work.

“I saw someone waving his coat. I knew the person was at that level. But the wind was blowing the cage about. I was just waiting for the smoke to clear. I could see I was putting it down in the flames. The banksman told me when he was in.

“I was no more than 20 metres up in the air and I looked out my left-hand window and saw a guy standing on the corner of the building.

“I’d only just seen him, and someone said, ‘Can you get the cage on?’. So that was it. I got the cage on and got it over to him the best I could. It was quite windy conditions. I would say it was a very close call, if you look at the video at the way the wind was swirling around there.

“I tried to put the cage down between him and the flames, but I was hampered by the wind swirling around there. But I got the cage down and I managed to get him in there."