Councillor jailed for his part in fossil-fuel protest

SERVING Somerset councillor has been sent to prison for his role in Just Stop Oil protests in 2022.

- DANIEL MUMBY

> Frome West councillor Michael Dunk, third from right, outside Southwark Crown Court and inset left

(Just Stop Oil)

Councillor Michael Dunk was one of two Green Party councillors elected to represent the Frome West division at the local elections in May 2022.

Mr Dunk was among numerous Just Stop Oil activists who climbed gantries on the M25 on November 8, 2022 to demand an end to new fossil ~ fuel projects.

Mr Dunk will spend Christmas in prison after he and five of his counterparts were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Friday - with a by-election being held in the new year to replace him.

Mr Dunk (who also represented the Frome Market ward on Mendip District Council between 2019 and 2023) climbed gantries on the M25 at 7am on the date in question to erect banners in protest against the then-Conservative government’s plan to license more than 100 new oil and gas projects, against all advice from environmental experts.

The banner, reading “Just Stop Oil” caused the police to close the motorway to traffic passing underneath the gantry.

Mr Dunk and his five counterparts were tried over the course of eight days in October 2025 - a trial in which the prosecution refused to accept any agreed facts on the climate crisis to be included in evidence.

A jury convicted all six of “intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance’; and Mr Dunk was sentenced by Judge Perrins to 26 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay £4,380 in costs.

Mr Dunk had already spent 187 days under curfew and a further eight days on remand while awaiting his trial, with this time being deducted from his sentence.

Due to the nature of his offence, he will only serve 40 per cent of his sentence with good behaviour, making him eligible for release in October 2026, and will spend the rest of his sentence on probation.