Well time has gone by and it's time for an update.
basically revisited some things, principally re-programming as it it's called on the lexia which really means re-configuring the load that the box has.
The gearbox software apparently knows about several engine configs, three of them have the 2.2 included. In addition it is possible for each of these configs to have such minor tweaks as town mode enabled (which I believe is another mapping) but more interestingly whether the car has ESC (P) or not.
I have tried all three configs, the first got me really worried having put it in couldn't select a gear, lever latched and auto-box failure warnings, cold sweats and sphincter muscle working overtime
Fortunately the second option which was the one I had started out with put everything right.
Finaly tried the third option with no ESC, having put this in the ESP/AS warning came up. Shut everything down and switched ignition on no warnings.
Drove the car auto-box now works as I would expect it to changes gear in a sensible fashion and no longer hangs on to second.
So in a nutshell telling the auto box ECU that it doesn't have an ESP system fitted makes it work correctly, ergo the ESP system when enabled is telling the gearbox to hang on to lower gears but why?? which paramater bit of data exactly could cause that?
cachaciero