You're not going to believe this guys (or maybe you are) it was a simple problem in the end - the table I was querying had the field set as text and not date format - relly elementary mistake. Sorry to have wated anyones time but thanks for all the advice.
Regards
Steve G
I have always used <Date() or <-Date() in queries to find records that are overdue before. I am now getting dates returned for 01/03/2011 which obviosuly arent overdue. Any ideas - I have tried indexing the date filed in the table and removing the type and even checking all current date...