Safety Fears For GreenPeace From Window Cleaning Spokesman

Free Climber & protester Ali Garrigan, yards from the top of the Shard.

The Shard: Greenpeace protesters scale Britain's tallest building - At just before 4.30am this morning six women began scaling the Shard in central London, the tallest building in western Europe, protesting on behalf of Greenpeace against oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. At 19.10 The protesters finally reached the top after more than 14 hours of climbing.

The Shard's management fear the protesters will not be able to secure themselves properly on the last stretch of building above the 72nd floor and are putting themselves in “extreme danger”.  The six women have been climbing for more than ten hours now, and will soon run out of places to secure themselves, it is feared. 

A spokesperson said: "The maintenance team we have working on the Shard is probably one of the most experienced abseiling teams in the world. "The window cleaning guys who work in the cradle are unbelievably experienced and work on buildings all over the capital, they do a maximum shift of two hours." "These guys have been on the go since four this morning, they must be absolutely shattered. "It's freezing cold in the wind and then the sun hits you, apparently when you are extremely tired that makes it extremely dangerous."

The group are named as Ali Garrigan, 27, from Nottinghamshire, Sabine Huyghe, 33, from Ghen in Belgium, Sandra Lamborn, 29, from Stockholm in Sweden, Liesbeth Deddens, 31, from Groningen in the Netherlands, Victoria Henry, 32, from London, and Wiola Smul, 34, from Poland. They are believed to have climbed onto the 72-storey building from the roof of London Bridge station in the early hours of this morning.

According to the spokesperson the climbers will run out of places to secure themselves, should they pass the viewing platform level. He said: "The group is spread out over a number of different floors and the lead climber is ahead of them and is therefore helping the others up the building. "We are worried that they think there is something they can use to get them all the way to the top, there isn't enough of the structure. "They have been using a purely cosmetic architectural element of the building. It's never been designed for climbing on or to be used for anything like that. It's purely part of the architect's design of the building. "They have been using parts of that to climb on, but as we said from the moment they started the danger is that the closer you get to the top there is no more of that structure available. That's been communicated with them throughout."

As the protestors near the five-storey viewing platform the decision has been made to close it to the public. The spokesperson explained: "Building's emergency response team has advised that the viewing platforms should be closed at this stage which is at the top of the building. "Only essential staff will remain there at this time. There is various bits they can open and various access points, but everyone within a certain area needs to be roped up and wearing harnesses. "The ambulance service are at the top, and can therefore assess their condition and give them fluids. "Because they are getting closer to it, and the viewing platform may well be the part that we get them back into the building." "It has been closed so that we can safely get them into the building because at some point, particularly with how tired they must be, they may need to come in and that's the best place to get them in."

A spokesman for the Shard's owners said they had tried to persuade the women to come inside at various access pointsbut they had refused, and continued up the building. Wind speeds of up to 64km/h had been recorded during the morning and the building's abseiling team, responsible for window cleaning and general maintenance, would not go out if they reached 40km/h. When asked if it was necessary to close the entire platform they said: "Our interest is from a safety point of view of getting them into the building. "The viewing platform is big, but we can't have members of the public, emergency services and a bunch of protesters trying to come in at the same time."

More on the Shard here.