Vandals caused problems for drivers today 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 at the entrance to the car park, in Gloucester Street, at about 6am and closed the car park.

City Works staff cleaned the area and the car park reopened shortly before noon.

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

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

“It was quite a big spillage and it made a terrible mess – we decided immediately that the car park would have to shut while we cleaned up.

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

Wai Ming Lin, property manager of the Oxford Noodle Bar, said the restaurant’s waste oil containers were vandalised.

He said: “They were contained and chained up according to all the regulations, but you can’t legislate for mindless vandalism.

“As far as I know, only two of our waste containers were affected.

“Somebody has come along and prized them open where they were stored at the rear entrance.

“I arrived at 9.45am to find the council staff down here and we checked our containers and found they had been vandalised.”

He added that because of the holidays, contractors were due to pick up the oil today, a day later than normal.

affrench@oxfordmail.co.uk