Hi - Thanks for your input.

I have found the reason why this keeps happening - My query drops the column before populating it. I have had to repeat this dropping and re-creating of the column multiple times. What I need to do is reclaim the space from the data page by running DBCC CLEANTABLE.

Thanks for everyone's help on this. Maybe if I had detailed the dropping/recreating the field we would have got there quicker. My bad.

Thanks.