I have now spoken to Hotpoint about this problem and was greeted with no surprise at all!
I can confirm that you can get the appropriate spares for £25 which include the bearing and also the seals - which are presumably the root of the problem. However, I estimate that it would take most of a day or a weekend to sort this out yourself, provided that nothing else has gone wrong.
Hotpoint will fix the problem, whatever it is for £89.11 including parts, labour and call-out fee (this is on a machine still with its parts warrantee intact)
So, despite it being an apparent design flaw and ultimately Hotpoints fault, for the sake of £65, they can have the hassle.
Learning point? - Checkout howtomendit.com before buying ANYTHING!!
Slewthy
August 2004