A MAN who was talked down from bridges by police four times in two weeks has had his jail term extended.

Tim Evans, of no fixed abode, appeared at Caernarfon Crown Court on Monday via video link from HMP Berwyn.

He admitted four counts of causing a nuisance to the public.

Jade Tufail, prosecuting, told the court that between April 4 and 17 last year, the 30-year-old crossed onto the outside of Flintshire highway bridges and then contacted friends and family, stating he intended to harm himself.

As a result, a large number of police resources were deployed to negotiate with him on each occasion and in order to prevent harm to him a number of major roads were closed for significant periods of time.

These included the A55, M53, M56, A494 and A5119.

Following the final incident on April 17 he was arrested for wasting police time, but told officers at interview he was "genuinely suicidal."

The next day police took him to Wrexham Maelor Hospital for a mental health assessment but he didn't engage and was discharged.

The court heard following each of the incidents he was not detained under the mental health act as "there was no acute mental health crisis."

Ms Tufail said the total cost of police resources allocated to help him during these incidents came to more than £13,000.

The most significant costs was estimated as a consequence of the road closures on the economy; almost £1.8m according to Traffic Wales, the court heard.

Simon Mintz, defending, said: "There's no doubt incidents of this kind cause huge inconvenience to the general public and are rightly regarded as a major public nuisance.

"Mr Evans has a long mental history. It's clear in his case that he has genuine, deep seated psychiatric problem and he wasn't simply trying to draw attention to himself and cause a nuisance.

"he was genuinely concerned about what he saw as the lack of communication in his relationship with community mental health teams and medical services at the start of the pandemic.

"He reached a point of desperation over matters including access to his medication."

Judge Timothy Petts told Evans: "You climbed onto the wrong side of bridges over major roads and threatened to harm yourself and it required the police to spend a lot of time to deal with you and talk you to safety.

"On each occasion you were obstructive and abusive and the police did their best to try to help you - to no avail.

"The harm here is high because of the significant waste of police resources, particularly bearing in mind this was in the first national lockdown."

The Judge handed Evans - who is part way through an ongoing sentence for unrelated matters - eight month concurrent sentences for each of the four offences.

That makes a total of eight months, which must be served consecutive to his current ongoing sentence.