I didn’t get an answer, but I did find a resolution to my problem
When creating the symlink I needed to use the freelink option.
The freelink option is not available via the GUI so use the cifs symlink create command with the -locality freelink
This gave me the symbolic link functionality I required within a CIFS mounted drive
Example
cifs symlink create -unix-path /rel/ -cifs-path /vol/release/rel/ -locality freelink
where the /rel NFS mount point resolves to /vol/release/rel
Note : I also believe the share ( in this case pc_rel ) has to be modified as follows
cifs share modify -share-name pc_rel -symlink-properties symlinks-and-widelinks no-strict-security
The above information should provide you the information for you to resolve your problem