STAFF have been evacuated from a motorway maintenance depot after they reported a potential chemical incident.

Police, fire and ambulance were called to the Highways Agency depot in Park Gate close to junction 9 of the M27 earlier this morning .

Workers alerted the emergency services after staff at reported feeling unwell and a strange smell and the site was evacuated and closed off.

The ambulance service assessed six people who were feeling unwell and dizzy after sending its hazardous area response team (HART) and an ambulance.

Fire crews vented the area, but no-one needed to go to hospital.

Police and fire service crews are reportedly still in the area checking on other businesses to try to find the source.

The site is home to 10 office staff and another 20 people use it to drop off and store materials.

Workers are responsible for highway maintenance of the M27 and surrounding roads, such as barrier repairs and grass cutting.

Staff were not sure it if was due to a chemical on site or an adjacent site and left the building.

Kevin Cotterell, asset delivery manager at the Highways Agency in Winchester, who oversees the site, said: “We had a noxious smell in the offices this morning for which we precautionary evacuated and called the fire brigade.

“Two colleagues had running eyes and felt nauseous.

“The fire brigade have come back and there's not anything.

“We have checked electrical and air conditioning and can find nothing.

“It could be something from the environment that's got in the air conditioning. Whether it was something blown across we really don't know.

“When the fire brigade checked everything had gone, the smell had gone.”

He said though an investigation was ongoing they had ruled out a chemical incident on site and workers had returned to their desks less than three hours later.

He said he understood from the fire service and police that they were going to check nearby businesses to try to locate where the smell might have come from.

The fire service is investigating the cause but a spokesman for Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service described the incident, which unfolded at around 8.15am, as a “false alarm”.