Well, I contacted the hosts again. They put the site back to php 5.4 saying that ‘something doesn’t work with 5.6’. However, now imagick doesn’t work again, despite them saying that the libraries are available. (Round in circles!) When the site is using php 5.6.3 then imagick works and there’s no message in the dashboard saying it needs to be installed. But then activating the theme SE causes a 500 internal server error. The site works fine with twenty eleven activated. As an aside, activating the backup plugin updraft also causes the 500 error.
I am tempted to leave it at php 5.4 and suffer without imagick. But it would be really good to get imagick working. Is it worth me putting in a support request so that you can have a root around for a problem? The site isn’t live yet so it would be possible.
Thanks for your support Robin.
Nicki