TRADING Standards bosses are warning companies to be on the look-out for a letter asking for more than £200 to register with a web company.

The mailshot, which has been sent out to businesses all over the county, implies that websites will be disconnected from the worldwide web if they do not pay the cash.

Around a dozen East Lancashire businesses who have received the letter have contacted the Trading Standards Services worried that they may lose their company domain name on the worldwide web unless the pay £225.60.

This letter indicates that failure to pay the London-based company, will simply result in the business not being listed as a web address on CWP's own commercial site.

Trading Standards say the value of their website listing is for each business to consider but there is no requirement to register and not responding to this offer will not affect the company's domain name and access through existing search engines.

Head of Lancashire Trading Standards, Jim Potts, said: "It is easy to get confused by this letter because this is a fairly novel area of business and the wording does imply a certain officialness about it."

Mr Potts said companies which had received the letter included businesses across East Lancashire, including Burnley and Nelson.

Trudy Taylor, administration manager for NEL Construction Ltd, Reedyford Road, Nelson, said they had received a letter from and had passed it straight to Trading Standards after suspicions were aroused.

Mrs Taylor said: "It is easy to see how a company could be confused by this as it simply appears as an invoice. We tried to contact them but could not get through to anybody.

Nobody from the company was available for comment.