I bought the car at a BMW dealers, they are getting some warranty work done for me a J&P and I'll ask them to look at the heating then.

yawlboy wrote:

The left hand side of the drivers footwell gets hot to the touch. Any ideas?

There is a flat 4" pipe that runs under the carpet in this area that goes to the rear heater vents under the seats. If your heater is on this will get warm, if you have a lot of excess heat in the cubby box area it could be possible that one of the ducts to the rear blower has become loose. The center cupholder/ashtray should pull out to let you have a look in there and feel around for air flow. 

yawlboy wrote:

I bought the car at a BMW dealers, they are getting some warranty work done for me a J&P and I'll ask them to look at the heating then.

If you remove the side trim of the footwell (center console side) you will see that the plastic pipe going down gets extremely hot. I think the insulation from the trim isn’t enough to keep the heat away. When I removed the trim last time I put some self-adhesive foam on the pipe and the heat wasn’t transmitted anymore, there was a huge difference between the passenger non insulated side and mine. Maybe this is the solution if the warm trim is annoying…

RREIRE - thats the one - pic in my gallery

thanks everyone for the advice. I'm getting to grips with it I think, I turned on the rear airflow today (kids had turned it off) and the temp is much better (still not perfect) but at least the cupholder isn't trying to boil things anymore.