THE manager of a beauty products shop in Burnt Oak said he is “in shock” after a fire at a wooden storage shed caused the damage of thousands of pounds of products.

The fire behind the International Gospel Church, in Watling Avenue, is under investigation and it is not known whether it is related to the London riots.

Firefighters were called to the unit, in Gervase Road, at around 9.15pm to tackle the fire at the shed and a car fire, which were both controlled by around quarter past 10.

The wooden storage shed is used by Beauty Paradise and Starkleen Drycleaners, both in Watling Avenue, and is owned by the church.

This morning the staff of Beauty Paradise, which sells synthetic hair products and cosmetics, came to work and found the burnt-out shed with hair products outside on the ground.

Manager Toufeeq Mohammed, from Southall, has been running the shop for three years.

He said: “Once the products are wet then you can’t use them. There is a lot of wasted stock, which I would say is worth about £40,000. I was in Southall last night as there was supposed to be trouble there.

“I found out about this this morning when I came in. Nobody deserves this. It is already a difficult time financially for businesses and this makes things worse.

“I employ six people here and we are just all in shock. Everybody is just upset. This is our livelihood.”

Shop worker at Beauty Paradise, Ali Shah, said: “We came in this morning to this. It was a pretty big fire and has taken a lot of stock, which is very bad for us.

“We have no idea what happened but the police are coming to investigate.”

Miloud Aouissi, from Scissorhands barber’s shop, in Watling Avenue, said: “I came up the road around the time of the fire last night and the road was closed.

“Police said a car was burnt but they removed the car last night and then we came this morning and found it was the shed also.

“It’s terrible for the businesses who use it.”

A picture of the fire was circulated on social networking site Twitter, which showed the building in flames.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) confirmed there was a small fire last night but had not been able to pinpoint the address due to its computer system crashing.

This morning an LFB spokeswoman said: “Firefighters put out the fire by around quarter past 10. They remained at the scene a little longer to make sure the fire stayed out.

“The fire is under investigation and we don’t know yet whether it was linked to the disturbances happening around London.”

The church and Starkleen Drycleaners were unavailable for comment.