Caliper might now be free, but has the geezer physically pumped the piston out a bit to see it working correctly?

Assuming its moving freely, did he clean up properly and lubricate the caliper slider, i recall these a being single piston jobbie with slider to equalise wear between inner and outer pad.

If all is moving freely, bleed the brakes all round if you haven't done so already, have you checked the rear cylinders, they might be (indeed are prone to) leaking leading to poor pedal and poor bleeding.

Oh and has someone looked at the inner face of the low effort disc....it might be grooved and pitted through lack of use.

It sounds to be like the whole braking system could do with a strip, clean inspect and replace as needed and lubricate properly on reassembly...i say that because someone went to the trouble of bleeding the brakes without checking the obvious.

Hope it works, don't forget to clean that slider well and lubricate it with the correct brake grease.

I had problems with an old Fiesta with barke imbalance: turrned out to be front flexi hoses disintegrating internally. Changed them and solved it.

(Took some thinking about : I wrote it down and worked it out from scratch)

hi just had the break imbalance checked and there is now only an 8% imbalance well below the threshold and will now pass the MOT thanks for everyones input has been a great help

Good man, and thanks for coming back with the result.