mums car went in for mot today an over heated due to fan not kicking in...its a 1.2 brava....everything else is working fine water cerculates fine heaters work...theres power going to the fan 12v jus under tested with multimeter...someone said about relays but i cant find them near the battery ? the 30a fuse is fine...any other ideas ? is there a way i cud short the fan to test the fan ? if so how

Thanks

You can feed 12v (+ and -) directly to the fan to test it.

I'm not familiar with the Brava (try posting in the Brava section) but fan issues are usually on the earth side.

The switch is on the earth side.
On older cars, 12v is supplied to the fan & the earth is fed to a thermal switch in the bottom of the rad. When the coolant gets up to temp, the switch earths & allows current to pass thereby activating the fan.
On newer cars, the fan has a supply as per usual but the earth returns to the ecu.
The ecu takes a reading from a variable resistor and activates the fan at a preset temp (like central heating activating from a roomstat). The ecu also uses that reading to feed the temp guage on the dash.

If the fan has power and you take the other lead to neg & the fan runs then i would suspect a dodgy thermal switch - on older cars a buildup of sludge/deposits often interfered with the working of the switch.