The Shard is Europe's tallest sky-scaper

The dare-devil ‘place hacker’ who climbed to the summit of the Shard building in central London has been named as Bradley L Garrett, a member of the London Consolidation Crew – a group of urban explorers.

Dr Garrett, who lives in Clapham and hails from Los Angeles, said he wanted to see the capital city from a “different perspective” – and had scaled the building half a dozen times in total.

Security at Europe’s largest sky-scraper near London Bridge was still lax, he said.

“It is impossible to secure a site that big. The security guards that work on the site are only human, no-one wants to sit there watching cameras 12 hours a day, they are going to have to take breaks, they are going to have to take walks,” he said.

“There are going to be times when they are not watching, there are going to be times when they are changing shifts.”

A spokesman for Stellar Property Group, the developer of the Shard, said the pictures were taken in 2010. Security measures had been tightened up since then.

“We believe this is an incident which took place around December 2010 when we were undertaking both ground and structure works,” he said.

“The breach was discovered very soon afterwards and security immediately tightened.

“Today security on the site is tight with 14 night-time security guards on duty continuously who cover all areas, as well as 25 CCTV cameras in operation together with a ground floor level laser alarm system.”