So.... I figured it out... I should have provided more information about how my application(s) were setup.
Because this particular system has multiple 'applications' within it, I have the codebase setup something like this:
admin
-- index.php
merchants
-- index.php
applications
-- admin
-- common
---- views
------ emails
-------- _wrapper.php
-- merchants
-- public
---- views
------ emails
-------- _wrapper.php
-------- contact_form.php
system
index.php
Because i want to share some files and code across applications, the email wrapper being one of them the file in applications/common/views/emails/_wrapper.php contained the HTML code for the email wrapper. The file in applications/public/views/emails/_wrapper.php contained the following code:
PHP Code:
<?php require_once BASEPATH.'../applications/common/views/emails/_wrapper.php';
I changed it to
PHP Code:
<?php require BASEPATH.'../applications/common/views/emails/_wrapper.php';
Problem solved. Sorry guy's, school boy error

Thanks for your help and feedback though.