Health bosses urged Brits to check their children's jabs are up to date after picking up signs of the virus being passed between individuals.
Experts have detected the same bug in London sewage samples since April – a clear signal of a community outbreak.
No cases have yet been confirmed in the UK and the UKHSA said samples were found in East and North London.
This, chiefs say 'suggests it is likely there has been some spread between closely-linked individuals'.
Because of this, they said these cases could be shedding the virus strain in their faeces.
Investigations are currently ongoing and there have not yet been any cases of paralysis reported.
Head of the vaccine epidemiology research group at Imperial College London, Prof Nicholas Grassly said there is concern that the virus may be circulating locally in London and could spread more widely.
Medics today said that the emergence of polio in the UK reminds us that it has not yet been eradicated.
The last case of polio being contracted in Britain was in 1984 and the country was declared polio-free in 2003.
Before a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, epidemics would result in thousands of people being paralysed annually and hundreds of deaths.
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) experts believe a traveller – likely from Pakistan, Afghanistan or Nigeria - shed the virus in their stools after being given the oral polio inoculation.
But the bug has now spread to others after mutating, with the same strain being repeatedly detected in sewage samples since May.
Health bosses have now launched an urgent investigation to pin-point the source and boost vaccination in affected areas.
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