g1smd - 6:02 pm on Jul 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

from the old site my developer is adamant that he canonicalises those URLs in the old site before they are sent to the new site even though the new site has the same 301 in place in case anyone does point to the non www (he fixes all the canonical elements and upper-case URLs along with the removal of trailing slash) this is on both the new and old

Do NOT fix on the old site using a redirect WITHIN the old site and then redirect again to the new site.

Redirect to the canonical URL on the new site with a single step fix from whatever URL was originally requested (old site anything, or new site non-canonical).