So I have been working on this for a while and thought I had better share what I did. I received some advice from Greg (OLDPINS) who has the same machine and I then replaced the front and rear panels. The rear panel was chipboard whereas the rest is plywood which I thought was bizarre so I replaced it with plywood. It wasn't too hard, I used a circular saw to cut the piece out and to make cuts to make joins. It all fitted together nicely so I then glued and screwed it. Very happy with the result.