Had been playing around which Apache to add a new virtual host and somewhere, somehow, the auto update on WordPress stopped working and insisted that I entered the FTP credentials which is not something I have enabled on this server. A bit of googling came across this post highlighted a potential work around in the WP-config.php to allow direct updates. A quick edit with EE and an apachectl restart and WordPress update routine worked flawlessly as it did before, with out needing FTP access.
Mirror site to farcorfe.org.uk