A SPY camera to catch flytippers in Oxford has just been used, despite being bought more than a year ago.

The news comes after it emerged the cost of clearing up illegally-dumped waste in the county topped £280,000 last year.

Oxford City Council unveiled the city’s first portable CCTV unit in December 2009 to catch flytippers.

The futuristic looking device was supposed to be placed at hotspots blighted by dumped rubbish, with recordings used as evidence in prosecutions against flytippers.

But the city council last night said technical problems meant the £15,000 device had only now been used.

It came as new figures showed 3,626 incidents of flytipping were reported to Oxfordshire’s councils between 2009 and 2010, cost- ing £280,817 to clean up. The figure was down on the previous year’s total of £341,893.

City council spokesman Louisa Dean said: “We have had considerable technical issues with positioning it. We have now resolved these.”

John Tanner, the council’s board member for a cleaner, greener Oxford, said: “We put our hands up. We got this one wrong.

“There have been problems with attaching it to lampposts, keeping within the law and powering the camera.”

Blackbird Leys Parish Council chairman Gordon Roper said: “It’s been a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

eallen@oxfordmail.co.uk