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Bailiffs today stormed a squat in the heart of Soho evicting around 20 people from a £14.5million town house.

At 7am, a dozen bailiffs entered through a back entrance of the five-storey Victorian terrace in Frith Street. Activists who moved in last month claimed they had occupied the old Reading Room building to raise awareness about homelessness in the capital.

Last year the building's owners John Lewis Pensions Partnership Trust submitted an application to turn the building into 10 flats and a ground-floor restaurant with a new penthouse apartment overlooking central London.

This morning squatters stayed outside the building, with trolleys of bedding and clothes as they prepared to move to another site.

One squatter, dressed in a black hoodie and dark jeans, told the Standard: "This building is going to be turned into luxury flats and a restaurant. John Lewis could easily have turned this into 30 or so flats for their workers.

"There were no problems this morning with the police we just gathered up our possessions and left. We're not going to remove the locks from the front doors though, the bailiffs can do that themselves.

"We'd had been trying to raise awareness about homelessness in the capital."

The building was the latest prestigious address to be taken over by the collective, who claim to have lived in 20 buildings since Christmas, including the former Institute of Directors HQ on Pall Mall and an 18th century Grade-II listed property in nearby Carlisle Street.

One squatter, in his 20s, swigging from a two-lite bottle of cider, said: "It doesn't matter that we've been kicked out of here. We've got another three places around here we plan on going to next."

Police, who had attended the scene earlier to oversee the eviction, were called back this morning at around 9.30am as squatters clashed in the street, with a fight breaking out between two of them.

There were no arrests.

The building had last been used by digital agency the Reading Room until 2006 when it was sold for £14.5million to a pension fund run by retail giant John Lewis.

No-one from John Lewis Pensions Partnership Trust was available to comment this morning.