IT is costing £130,000 a year to stop flytippers ditching rubbish at Oxford’s ‘superdump’, the Oxford Mail can reveal.

Security guards are on duty 24 hours a day at the Redbridge Hollow site, South Oxford, to safeguard it since a £280,000 clean-up operation last year.

The £2,500-a-week cost emerged as Oxfordshire County Council revealed that plans for eight more travellers’ pitches have been dropped because of national budget cuts.

Flytippers were responsible for dumping more than 3,000 tonnes of waste at Redbridge over 20 years.

After the clean-up, the county decided to put in guards rather than install CCTV. Travellers camped at Redbridge Hollow said cameras would invade their privacy.

The county said the security would only be in place until a use is found for the site. But the Government’s rejection of the plans for more pitches has now put its future up in the air.

Last night, residents living nearby branded the 24-hour security “a waste of money” and said they would welcome more traveller pitches at the site of the former dump.

Pam Johnston, clerk to Kennington Parish Council, said: “I think they should ask the pitch holders themselves if they want to develop the site.

“If a CCTV camera was only pointing towards the site it’s not infringing people’s human rights – £130,000 a year is a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Brian Baggott, of Woodcroft, Kennington, said not putting CCTV at the site was a “misguided decision”.

He added: “Personally I think there are not enough traveller pitches. Certainly more ought to be available.”

An estimated 200 travellers live on 15 plots at the county council-run Redbridge Hollow site.

County Hall spokesman Owen Morton said: “The security will be withdrawn as soon as possible, once the council has identified a future use for the site.

“If people didn’t break the law by flytipping, we wouldn’t need to spend money on security measures.

“Unfortunately this is necessary to avoid further large-scale accumulations of fly-tipped rubbish as a consequence of other people’s criminal behaviour.”

Kennington and Radley county councillor Arash Fatemian added: “It’s a short-term measure.

“Other measures will be put in place once we’ve decided what to do with the site.”

Last year, County Hall was told by the former Labour Government to provide more traveller pitches across Oxfordshire, including nine in Oxford, and it applied for £1m to build them.

However, that grant programme has ceased due to the new Government’s drive to cut costs.

The Government has not yet revealed a plan for how many extra pitches must be provided by local authorities across the region over the next few years.

Mr Morton said a review of possible uses for the site of the former dump was under way, including the possibility of creating a smaller number of pitches than the eight proposed.

He added: “The county council has been informed by the Homes and Communities Agency that as part of the new Government’s drive to reduce the budget deficit, the grant application assessment process for the Gypsy and Traveller Site grant programme has ceased.

“The council’s application for grant funding to provide eight new traveller pitches on the land recently cleared of fly-tipped waste has therefore been rejected.”