THE INSURANCE company blamed for halting the work of a string of environmental groups in the town has hit back on the day another group announced it is to scale back its work.

Ecclesiastical Insurance covered more than 2,000 conservation groups through a policy with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers.

But now it has withdrawn cover for all but 25 per cent of the groups because it claimed it was not aware of the extent of the activities it was insuring.

The Peatmoor Community Woodland, which has not made a claim in its 13 year history and uses only hand tools, has had its insurance cover by Ecclesiastical withdrawn.

Liz Emerson, the treasurer and secretary, said: "Unless we can find alternative insurance we will have to stop our work.

"We must be a very low risk. They told us they are excluding groups that have been with them for more than three years but we thought experienced groups would pose a lower risk than inexperienced people.

"The council has volunteer rangers and we hope our volunteers can join that scheme but the drawback is that our work would be limited because a council employee would have to be present whenever we are working."

Two other small scale groups, the Seven Fields Conservation Group and Quarries Wildlife Garden, have been forced to scale back their work after Ecclesiastical's deal with the BTCV broke down.

The firm has blamed the rise in claims from companies specialising in no win no fee cases and the economic impact of September 11.

Ecclesiastical spokesman Toby Barker said: "When the deal expired we met the BTCV to discuss who exactly we were insuring because of the number of people we were discussing.

"We discovered the majority of groups we had been providing cover for were not involved in what we thought the BTCV was we understood it was activities like cleaning up parks and wading into small ponds.

"We discovered we were covering big projects lasting months or even years, projects often backed by the local authority.

"Our new regulations include not insuring groups working 15 feet below water or at the top of tall ladders."