A check on the hosting company's own DNS servers returns a number of errors.
(Some of the nameservers listed at the parent nameservers did not respond)

So if they can not get their own right - what chance for their customers?

I got this reply from their support:

Hello Stephen,

This usually happens when someone tried to add the domain when was pointing to wrong nameservers. The server remembers that settings and wont let you do it until the cache is cleared.

Could you please check now and see if it will work?

Which doesn't make much sense to me. Below is a screenshot of what I see when I go into the dns zone in WHM.

http://www.stephenrobertshaw.co.uk/settings.png

God this is all making me feel stupid

Nope.. those nameservers still don't serve results for your domains. Using dig, as I have, does not depend on cache as it is querying their servers directly.

Matt

Urg. So what do I do next?

Go back to them (UH?) and say that your zone isn't on their auth nameservers and they can verify by doing..

dig @ns5.000025.net cheshirecopperlanterns.co.uk -t ANY

- or - move to another host that can run DNS correctly.

Matt

I'm thinking that option 2 might be best but I'm not sure I have the time/energy to do that at the mo. Will have a think and decide what to do once I get home from work.

Many thanks for your help with this, it is much appreciated

Have to agree with the last suggestion.

Use this current problem to provide the impetus to move to a decent provider.

Once it's resolved the inertia will set in until the next problem comes along - which may be a lot worse.

In reply to a post by uno:

- or - move to another host that can run DNS correctly.

Exactly.

In reply to a post by ilh:

Below is a screenshot of what I see when I go into the dns zone in WHM.
http://www.stephenrobertshaw.co.uk/settings.png

The DNS on that domain is not good, either
Same hosts?