ESP8266 for Layzspa controller not connecting to HA

Hi, i am going round in circles the last few days trying to get my ESP8266 to connect to HA. I have HA with Zigbee2MQTT, Mosquito broker and MQTT and normally anything ESP/MQTT appears on the Z2M add on and then it is visible in the MQTT integration for inclusion in HA desktop etc.
However i can configure the ESP to connect to the WiFi network (192.168.2.63) and aslo configure the MQTT access IP address (192.168.2.143) but it will not pair with the Z2M add on even if i set Z2M to ‘Permit to join’.
I am after some guidance please as im going round and round and getting nowhere. Appreciate your help. Thanks

Note - this worked last year when the tub was last used but when set up again recently the ESP would not conenct. HA core and MQTT, Z2M latest versions.

Z2M is zigbee esp8266 does not do zigbee, it will not connect. You need to add it as an MQTT device.

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Pretty sure this is not true.
Very few if any ESP chips are zigbee capable.
Also Z2M uses the MQTT Broker to communicate to Home Assistant. I have many things using MQTT that have nothing to do with my Z2M stuff.