Lillyhall's University Technical College has undergone a deep clean after it was hit by a suspected mystery virus.

Staff have been briefed to keep an eye out for symptoms resurfacing at the college where students were kept off site for three days in a bid to reduce the chance of any condition spreading.

Teenagers returned to the Energy Coast UTC, on Blackwood Road, for their first day of classes on Monday since an evacuation last Thursday.

The principal, Gary Jones, said he was delighted things were back to normal following the alert.

The building was evacuated following fears of possible contamination, with the 360 people who were inside leaving within four minutes. 

The alarm was raised after two students – both of them male – passed out. Another was taken ill and several more were affected by dizziness and headaches. 

Police were called to the building just after 2pm, along with fire service personnel and paramedics. 

One student was taken to the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven for treatment but was later discharged. 

While the college was closed engineers checked out heating and air conditioning equipment and other staff carried out a deep clean of the building. 

Mr Jones repeated his praise for the way his students handled the evacuation and pointed out it was the kind of situation they may face in their engineering careers. 

He said many of the students wanted to go onto careers in the nuclear industry and this was a good example of an emergency response. 

He added: "We are 100 per cent back into lessons and normal activities. They have all got aspirations to work in engineering environments, but this isn’t the way I wanted to test our response plan.

"We will be monitoring the situation."