Just to update. I did finally get VW UK to pay up for full pedalbox replacement. My local London-based dealership were useless. I did have full service history, but they told me my chassis number wasn't in the range to receive goodwill (alth the year of the car, '02, was - some '01 cars apparently are also eligible). I chased this with VW UK asking why certain chassis numbers could get goodwill and others not (i.e. what criteria they were using to discriminate which cars should get goodwill) and, after they took a while to look into it, they said they couldn't find the information and so agreed to reimburse the costs of the replacement (by this time I had had the car towed to a local garage and paid half the dealership price to have the pedalbox repaired). It took a lot of phone calls, but worth it in the end.