Okay, thanks for following up on this.
The reason for my approach is that I wanted to be able to create composite widgets using the benefits of the designer, yet implement the logic of the interactions in c++. Hence assigning the child widget references in the blueprint construct event.
Anyway, as I said, I have no problem working around this for now. If an update could be posted here if a fix is made, that would be great.
Cheers.