A COUNCIL house in Oxford was left in such a festering state of decay it could cost more than £25,000 to make it worth living in again.

A decade of neglect by one council tenant left the two-bedroom house in Vicarage Road, off Abingdon Road in Oxford, uninhabitable. The house, described as the worst-kept council property ever, was caked in cobwebs, excrement, dirt and grime to such an extent that housing chiefs thought the tenant inside was dead.

They were so worried they smashed their way into the house expecting to find the worst, but were amazed to discover the tenant functioning as normal.

Remarkably, he had chosen to live in squalor and even managed to hold down a full-time job.

City council housing workers have taken 300 bin bags of rubbish from the house, which was two feet deep in waste in places.

The vulnerable tenant has since been rehoused into a smaller, more manageable property.

But the damage is so severe that a specialist cleaning team will have to be hired to rip up and dispose of the carpets and fixtures and fittings.

And the damage is so widespread that city council housing chiefs are now likely to recommend the property is sold on the open market rather than spend thousands of pounds renovating it. City housing tsar Martyn Mumford said: "You can't begin to imagine what it was like in there the tenant lived like a hermit for ten years. This is the worst of any kind of council property we have seen, and we have seen a lot.

"We have likened this place to the television series the Life of Grime the council thought the tenant was dead.

"We found ten years worth of rubbish."

The tenant lived just yards away from New Hinksey C of E Primary School.

The damp house was crammed full of everyday junk food wrappers, bottles and overflowing ash trays, and scattered with rotting food that gave off an indescribable stench.

There are some 5,000 people registered on the council housing waiting list, but only a handful of the 8,000 properties become vacant each year.