Three anti-fracking activists are thought to have become the first environmental campaigners to be jailed for a protest in the UK since 1932. Simon Roscoe Blevins and Richard Roberts were sentenced to 16 months in prison and Richard Loizou to 15 months on 26 Sep 2018, after being convicted of causing a public nuisance by a jury at Preston crown court in August. Another defendant, Julian Brock, was given a 12-month suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the same offence. The four men were charged after taking part in a four-day direct action protest that blocked a convoy of trucks carrying drilling equipment from entering the Preston New Road fracking site near Blackpool. The site near Preston New Road has been a focal point for protests since the government overturned a decision by Lancashire county council and gave the energy firm Cuadrilla consent to extract shale gas at two wells on the site in October 2016. More than 300 protesters have been arrested since Cuadrilla began constructing a fracking pad at the site in January 2017.