Vandals caused problems for drivers this morning by pouring containers of cooking oil on the ramp of Gloucester Green car park in Oxford.

City council officials discovered the 30 gallons of oil spread over the entrance of the car park of Gloucester Street at about 6am this morning and closed the car park.

City Works staff are now cleaning the area and hope the car park will be reopened this afternoon.

George Chesterfield, duty officer for the council’s City Works department, described the vandalism as “mindless stupidity”.

He added: “We found half a dozen empty five gallon drums, so there must have been about 30 gallons poured down the ramp.

“You can’t allow drivers to go through it because if they touch their brakes on the ramp they will go into the wall.

“This is a major inconvenience for people who use this car park regularly to come into work, or go shopping, and we will be checking CCTV footage to see if we can find out who did this, so we can inform the police.”

Mr Chesterfield said he would be contacting the council’s environmental health department to ask officers to find out where the containers came from.

“It’s possible the containers have been taken from outside a restaurant in the Gloucester Green area,” he added.

“For the time being drivers will have to park in the Worcester Street or Westgate car parks instead.”