Okay, so I got home and the flashing light has turned to always on. I tried resetting the wash program and put it to slow spin. It locked the door and put the final spin light on - and then nothing. After a few minutes the door lock light has started flashing and the final spin light remains on...
I've just had a call from my (worried) wife saying that the washing machine is not working, and hotpoint want to charge us £140 for an engineer to come out and look at the error codes.... it's a WF541 and so I found this rather useful looking thread...
I haven't seen the machine myself yet...