Thanks for your reply.

Having investigated the existing drainage further and researched on
the www about how it should be done it seems I have a little job on my
hands to correct the sloppy work done previously!

An example of how bad it is : I dug up some small shrubs from the
border aound the lawn, took approx one cubic foot of soil, and within
a few minutes every hole was full of water

Still does not look too difficult to correct