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thanks for all your comments guys, was really useful for me to explain to the engineer what he should be doing!

i dont know yet. the engineer let me down, but promised me he would be coming this week. I just havent had time to come down. I do cricket coaching, and that takes up my early summer weekends, so I have only had one of the jubilee bank holidays to look a it. But i have been doing my research on how to diagnose, and i am taking an old bilge pump with me to load the circuit, as in @Steve S suggested above. but i am hoping it is fixed, as we are coming down camping with the family for the weekend to get out!

A tip, when testing the voltage load up the circuit while doing so. I use an 18w bulb with some wires attached. You don't even need a volt meter just touch the wires from the bulb across the circuit, if it doesn't light up brightly you have problem with the circuit somewhere. If you feel you need to know the voltage only do so with the bulb attached. Next after checking for obvious possible corrosion points is to go back along connection points to breakdown which part of the wiring has the problem. The problem with using a voltmeter is they require such low current to operate (very high impedance) even if the wiring is only connected by totally corroded through copper the full battery voltage will still be shown! only a completely open circuit will indicate 0 volts. This results in much wasted time as you think the problem lies elsewhere.