TRADING standards are taking advice from a specialist barrister and the Office of Fair Trading on how to take legal action against Lapland New Forest for “misleading” customers.

Dorset County Council is looking into a range of legal options, said head of regulatory services Bill Jaggs.

He added: “We cannot give further details, as this might prejudice the action we decide to take.”

Staffordshire County Council trading standards are checking if an event opening today with a similar website is connected, said a spokesman.

Laplands West Midlands is being held at Essington north east of Wolverhampton.

Several of the same companies who did contract work at Lapland New Forest are either involved at Laplands West Midlands or were approached.

A council source said: “We are asking PayPal to freeze money coming out of people’s accounts.”

The Echo was told the man running the event would call back but did not hear anything. The website carries a statement saying: “We are nothing to do with Lapland New Forest. We are a separate company.”

A woman who answered the phone said: “We just hired someone to do the website. It’s going to be brilliant – everyone will see we are not linked with them.”

The Laplands New Forest website domain name was sold off at 11.55pm on Thursday, the day the site shut, and now carries information on a website hosting company.

Promoter Henry Mears said he had no comment when phoned yesterday and hung up.

At Matcham’s itself yesterday morning there was a lone guard on duty and the odd exiting HGV.

Matchams director Frederick Nash had previously said there was “not a snowball’s chance in hell” Lapland would be back next year but could not be contacted yesterday.

Lapland New Forest director Victor Mears blamed the closure on sabotage, inaccurate media reporting, and the cutting of funds by merchant company Streamline.

Streamline is part of RBS and a spokesman yesterday said: “As events materialised, we took the appropriate action and in accordance with the terms and conditions agreed with the customer.

“Any suggestion this action was illegal is completely unfounded.”

Rumours circulated online that customers’ credit cards had been cloned, though Dorset Police and Consumer Direct said they had not received any complaints.

A demonstration to be led tomorrow morning by former “Elf” Adrian Wood from Christchurch has been cancelled.