Wimbledon fits anti-terror road barriers to protect fans

DOZENS of new security barriers have been erected on the approach to the All England Club to protect next week’s Wimbledon crowds from a potential vehicle attack.

More than 50 waist-high steel posts have been temporarily bolted into the pavement as Scotland Yard warned the terror threat “hasn’t gone away”.

A heavy steel cage has also been placed at the entrance to the ground where fans will go through robust security checks as armed police patrol.

The security of the championships, which open on Monday, remains a priority for the police who do not want a repeat of the sort of deadly vehicle attacks seen at Westminster Bridge, London Bridge and Finsbury Park last year.

Supt Jo Edwards said: “Driving a vehicle on to the pavement into a crowd is a very simple method of attack which we need to mitigate against as far as we can. The threat hasn’t gone away. We’ve successfully foiled a number of plots during the course of the past year and so we haven’t seen the devastating incidents we saw in 2017, but we are working hard all the time to deter further threats.”

Other security measures at the championships will include “queue profiling”, with uniformed police, undercover officers and security staff monitoring upwards of 40,000 daily visitors to the tournament.

A spokesman for the All England Club said organisers had been working closely with the Met to ensure measures were “proportionate” to the threat level in the UK.”

The UK’S terror threat level remains at the second highest level of severe, meaning that an attack is highly likely but not imminent.