A WOMAN who single-handedly stopped traffic for five hours by climbing onto a lorry outside the fracking site at Kirby Misperton faces a £315 court bill.

Tamla Natasha Hunter, 40, who gave her address as the protest camp outside the site, admitted tampering with a vehicle. She was fined £200, plus a £30 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs at York Magistrates Court.

Hunter’s actions breached two conditional discharges imposed for obstructing police in Manchester and Surrey, the court heard.

Simon Ostler, prosecuting, said all traffic on the road had to be stopped for five hours on September 28 because it was too dangerous to pass the lorry, which itself couldn’t move because of her presence on top of it.

She got onto the lorry when it was delayed by another protester as it was leaving the site and climbed onto the seat of a dumper truck on top of the lorry.

Hunter told the court: “I wanted to delay it as long as possible.”

District judge Adrian Lower said he was sure she had sincere views about fracking and that she had the right to engage in peaceful protest. However, fracking was a lawful act, he said.

“The right to protest is not an unqualified right for people to do exactly what they want. It has to be exercised within the law.

“By your climb up onto the lorry and into the (dumper truck), you crossed the line.”

Originally from Manchester, she is a member of the anti-fracking protest outside the Third Energy site near Kirby Misperton and represented herself in court.

She stayed on the lorry for five hours until police were able to persuade her to come down of her own accord.