The better half has a 53 plate 1.2htp. Engine light has come on, so I drove it for the 1st time last week and it felt like an absolute pig, like it was running on only 2 cylinders.

I changed the spark plugs, coil packs and it's running much better now although I'm guessing the compression is down on cylinder 1 given that the engine light is still on (which is a known problem on this engine I think). Given it's got 80,000+ miles on it we've no plans to get shut, and it's fine for just bobbing about round town apart from one issue - when stationary the rev's drop to just below 600pm, almost stalling before rising back to 1,000rpm, and it keeps repeating this.

Any ideas how to solve the tickover problem?

May work as a temporary fix (I know it can on the 1.4 MPi) but if you turn the air con on it puts more load on the engine and causes the revs to rise a bit.

Guessing it's going to be hard to fix without a fault scan, could be one of many things though.

Had a similar problem with my 1.2 HTP idle and ran like a pig was only firing on 2 cylinders.

Cost £50 to hava it plugged in and diagnosed and reset they didn,t charge to have repeate diagnosis Turned out to be a dodgey injector about £120 to fix at local garage.