Urgent issue with project size stopping me from doing new update

I have 2 projects that keep giving me validation issues because the HLOD layer seems to keep old data in it even if I use Delete HLODs from the Build HLODs menu
To get around this I’ve been deleting the HLOD layer from the Content Browser

Make a new HLOD layer, delete old HLOD layer, replace references to the new one, don’t save.
then build landscape, double click on Level in content browser, then build HLODs