A MAN who broke a restraining order has been jailed.

Craig Alan Shepherd appeared before magistrates after pleading guilty to breaking the order.

The 34-year-old was said to have visited a property in Barrow's Dumfries Street, which had previously been banned from entering.

The court heard the defendant was found lying in bed by police at the address on October 24.

A restraining order prohibiting him from visiting the address was imposed on Shepherd at South Cumbria Magistrates' Court on September 18.

Magistrates heard he had committed the offence while on licence from a prison sentence.

Shepherd was handed a prison sentence of 28 days.

Magistrates were told Shepherd had breached the order 'almost immediately' after leaving custody and had a 'history of domestic abuse'.

His actions were said to have contravened the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

Magistrates handed him a victim surcharge of £122.

Shepherd, of no fixed abode, had previously been in court for a number of other offences.

Last year he was jailed for 15 months after he pleaded guilty to possession of a knife and breach of a criminal behaviour order.

The court was told that Shepherd, of Egerton Court at the time, unleashed a torrent of violent threats towards one of his neighbours while holding a bottle of vodka and brandishing a kitchen knife with a 20cm-long blade, on March 7.

He had been previously been banned from drinking in public for two years after admitting two charges of being drunk and disorderly.

In 2016 he appeared before the court charged with beating up his ex-partner.

He was jailed for 70 days after he admitted assaulting Maxine Turner in Windermere on November 29 of that year.