EXTINCTION Rebellion activists blockaded the BBC’s London headquarters as a week of protests over the climate crisis continued.

Staff reported being unable to get into work at New Broadcasting House yesterday morning as protesters camped outside the main entrance with banners urging the corporation to end its “silence” on climate change.

Financial journalist Paul Lewis tweeted: “No-one in no-one out. Locked down.”

At the end of a week of demonstrations in which there have been more than 1100 arrests, Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick, right, said the force has been “stretched” by Extinction Rebellion protests, impeding its ability to respond to other crimes.

Dick added that she hoped the demonstrators would choose to either “protest lawfully” or “go home” after what she described as their “failure to take and occupy the streets that they wanted to”.

“It takes its toll on my officers too,” the police chief said of the mass protests.