I saved the metadata to a rather large number of files, only to find nothing had been written, was all the face tagging I had done.
I eventually discovered that it was my USB port, which wasn't making a good enough connection to allow the MD to be written. Something to consider, now it's ok as I am using an internal HDD.....think Lightroom should verify that metadata is written, with an error report generated......could make it optional but can't see why it's not included anyway, thanks