YOUTHS scarpered from police after clambering onto a rooftop in Abingdon.

Airborne officers swooped towards the former Upper Reaches hotel on Saturday after sightings of a group of young people.

Thames Valley Police spokeswoman Lucy Billen said officers from NPAS Benson were called in after reports of 'four or five people on the roof' at 5.15pm. 

She said the group looked to be in their teens or early 20s but had disappeared by the time the helicopter arrived.

The empty Thames Street hotel closed in 2015 and has sat boarded-up ever since, with police called out several times to reports of antisocial behaviour.

In January the hotel's leaseholder told the Oxford Mail he planned to revamp the building with a mixed hotel and residential scheme.