Hi Martin,
yeah that was done first thing but it had no effect, I did that before making single user and was thinking isn’t that the same thing.
The texture painting issue looks to be wholly from the stacked UVs. I wonder if I had to do any unlinking, applying modifiers and it would have worked by separating them off the UV stacking? It may be something I’ll try to repeat later just to see how things work.
Thanks again