ShyTorque,
armed with this new and exciting info, I checked JAR-OPS 3 3.250 and that says that basically minimum flight altitudes shall be determined by the operator in his ops manual, subject to national limits etc.
so i checked my company ops manual and that says minimum 1000 AGL doh!,
so I am back to where I started, but at least I know that the national limits are more generous
regards
CF