This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old

More than 100 people were arrested in a dawn raid today over an alleged attack being planned on a coal-fired power station.

Scores of officers from Nottinghamshire police swooped on a privately-run school in the Nottingham suburb of Sneinton in a coordinated operation.

Officers from the neighbouring Derbyshire and Leicestershire forces were drafted in to help with the raid and both forces are providing custody spaces for those arrested.

Officers who raided the independent Iona School in Sneinton, Nottingham, said the protesters would have posed "a serious threat" to the safe running of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire police said specialist equipment recovered during the raid led them to believe the power station was the intended target.

He said: "Just after midnight tonight, Nottinghamshire police arrested 114 men and women from across the UK on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage."

A spokeswoman for E.on, which runs the power station at the centre of the alleged plot, said: "We can confirm that Ratcliffe power station was the planned target of an organised protest during the early hours of this morning.

"While we understand that everyone has a right to protest peacefully and lawfully, this was clearly neither of those things so we will be assisting the police with their investigations into what could have been a very dangerous and irresponsible attempt to disrupt an operational power plant."

Nottinghamshire police said 114 people were held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage at a power industry facility.

Police refused to comment further on the circumstances surrounding the arrests.

Residents reported seeing more than 20 police vans surrounding a complex of buildings near the Bakersfield community centre in Sneinton just after midnight.

Nottingham city councillor David Mellen said the police raided the school as the result of "an intelligence-led operation".

He said: "I don't know whether it was the school itself being used or the car park. Neighbours reported a lot of noise after midnight. It seems to have been used as a rendezvous for people from a wide area."

One eyewitness told the Nottingham Evening Post: "I was leaving my house when I noticed a long steady line of traffic coming towards and passing me. It seemed very strange, as the vehicles got closer and started to pass me I noticed every single one was either a police car or police vans.

"I counted around 20-plus police vans all one after the other with police cars at the rear of the brigade."

Another witness told the newspaper what happened after the van surrounded the building: "The police jumped out and were running up to the school behind the community centre. Then the police brought out groups of people, who were singing 'We will be back again'."

Today, the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, located eight miles south west of Nottingham, was being protected by police patrols. It has been targeted by protesters before.

Eleven people from the Nottingham-based Eastside Climate Action were arrested in April 2007 after chaining themselves to buildings and equipment on the site.