Thames Valley Police have been doing the same for years. Although squatting is a civil matter, in common law any citizen (not just a constable) can report trespass to the “rightful” owners of the property. Here in a relatively rural area, land and property owners often look out for one another and also work with the cops to report anyone they think is squatting very quickly…
given the history of the building it is however well known to the cops, apparently the pub went out of business as it was broken into and robbed of cash/fruit machine money etc..
A strange phenomenon I’ve noticed in SE England was it was harder to squat a working class area than a middle class area as the working class would dob you in quicker or even try vigilanté stuff. Easiest places to hold long term in SE England were office and warehouse buildings from the 1980s which do not have modern structured cabling and thus are more costly for IT-based businesses to rent. In East Anglia, however, this property is in high demand and rarely left empty.
