oh no, hang on my mistake - just realised that the paths in my ftdetect symlinks are not correct (missing ../). Corrected them and it now works!!! So, yes, that was the problem.
I have also removed the addition to the runtimepath of after/plugin as well as the symlinks, so all I have now are the symlinks in .vim/ftdetect and the line in .vimrc that adds the UltiSnips directory to the runtimepath and it all works fine now.
Thank you so much for helping me along with this
oh no, hang on my mistake - just realised that the paths in my ftdetect symlinks are not correct (missing ../). Corrected them and it now works!!! So, yes, that was the problem.
I have also removed the addition to the runtimepath of after/plugin as well as the symlinks, so all I have now are the symlinks in .vim/ftdetect and the line in .vimrc that adds the UltiSnips directory to the runtimepath and it all works fine now.
Thank you so much for helping me along with this