Cheers Butters.
I believe so - my fiance bought it some time ago and can't remember exactly what she paid for - but whenever its plugged into Garmi express it seems to have some kind of map update available. Is there any way to know for sure?

I plugged it in and checked what Garmin express had to say, but no mention there of lifetime maps or LM

it did have an option to re-install the existing map. So I tried that option - it took quite a few minutes ( long enough to download an entire map ) so that was a good sign.
I then took it outside again and waited till it had a satellite fix - and again tried "Swansea"
the result was still "Location not found"......
so it seems my little saga continues.