Right. I had a good look around and tested a lot of things... at one point, I noticed that on the mixer page some sliders were triggering a chanel volume as well as the master or output volumes and no matter how I attemtped to remap using Automap learn or manually inserting the values, I couldn't get it to behave. I also tested the transport behaviours and there was no change regardless of the loop on or off...
At this point, I opened the Environment. In here looked like I'd just opened the internet's man drawer. That's when I realised that the project I had been working off was originally someone else's and probably from a Logic template.
I closed Logic, restored Automap to default settings and closed it. I then opened Logic with a new project and saved that project as a new template and also saved the project. From here, the Novation worked as I'd expect straight away. Thanks seeren. Perhaps this will help others experiencing unusual behaviors in this way...
Now I want to work out where to save my Automap templates... every day is a school day.