Scores of traps are to be laid in Jericho as Oxford's great rat hunt starts in earnest.

Thames Water and Oxford City Council are poised to carry out a large-scale baiting exercise in a bid to get rid of as many rodents as possible.

The development comes after the Oxford Mail revealed last month that Thames Water used high-tech CCTV cameras in sewers under the homes and gardens of houses in Great Clarendon Street to see if there was a problem.

There is - and baiting is likely to last several months.

The city's rat row started after Oxford academic Frances Kennett said her home in Great Clarendon Street was infested with rodents.

She has blamed the introduction of fortnightly waste collections for an explosion in the rat population - and even went to court after withholding council tax payments.

Thames Water spokesman Don Sharples said: "We acknowledge there is a rodent problem. The council have asked us to assist them in baiting and we have agreed.

"We are doing everything we have been asked to do to assist council and residents, but it is everyone's responsibility."

The company is now set to use large poisonous blocks of bait suspended in manhole chambers in a bid to catch the rats.

Dr Kennett said she felt vindicated that rat infestation was a problem affecting large areas of Jericho.

She said the investigation proved her problems had not resulted from a localised drainage problem, as the city council had suggested.

Dr Kennett said: "I have been asking the council for months to get on to Thames Water without results.

"Only by holding my ground and continuing the fight has this been achieved. Both the Thames Water engineer and the council's rodent officer have proposed the answer to the problems in Jericho is not my single drainage system.

"All the neighbouring houses have a separate system and two of those houses as well as mine also have had rats coming up from the sewers."

Figures for April to September showed Jericho and Osney to be one of the five least rat affected areas, with just 35 rodent-related callouts compared with 105 in Cowley and 77 in Wolvercote.

City councillor Susanna Pressel, who represents Jericho and Osney, said: "There are a lot of rat sightings which are not recorded and I am convinced there are more rats this year above ground than there were last year."

City councillor Jean Fooks, executive member for a cleaner city, added: "Evidence shows rat baiting helps control the rat population."