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Further update. Speedo / limp mode occurred again before the car was due at the main dealer. Car deposited with them at 8am and by 9:15 they had identified a fault not picked up by Alliance or Continental Cars! A pin on the ABS pump was bent at an angle of about 45 degrees which was causing communication errors all over the place. They asked whether we wanted them to try to straighten the pin and warned that if it snapped, a new pump would be required. As luck would have it, the pin straightened OK which cleared 90% of the faults. Only remaining issue was that the OSR speed sensor connector plug had been cut out and the wires directly soldered (not clear who did this). A replacement plug could have been bought for £3! The solder was creating too high and ohms reading? - it needed the plug which meant also replacing the speed sensor as it's plug had been cut off. End result - all issues resolved for £350 with main dealer within a day. Both local specialists (and Autotec) had told me that the ABS pump was faulty and needed to be replaced. BBA reman who inspected the unit after Autotec had said the pump tested ok. The key advantage to Main Dealer is that they could have returned an ABS pump if they tried it and it didn't work - an option not available to the specialists. Moral of the story is that I'm sure there are many very capable specialists out there, but from my experience there are lots who are also less capable. The lottery of distinguishing one from the other is too expensive a game for me (about £1,000 in this case) - although I know that main dealer can also have issues, generally they have more to lose by getting it wrong and have more options available to them to try things out (eg try before you buy on new parts). Still early days - around 100 miles fault free - will send a further update in a few weeks. In fairness to Continental, they did identify and fix a problem with a gearbox oil leak which Alliance had failed to identify, despite us telling them that oil was dripping onto our driveway. I would not use Alliance or Autotec again. It's disappointing that Continental couldn't identify the problem with the car - given that it was picked up so quickly and concisely by the main dealer.
