[Django]-Upgrading to django 1.11 many to many column not found

Looks like the issue was in fact to do with a (much) earlier rename of the model concerned. The django ticket linked below describes the issue well:

https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/29000

An earlier migration that renamed the model was not properly resolved in django 1.11 ( this has changed from 1.10 ) and the relevant Foreign Key column names were not updated after the table rename. The polyfill migration operation class detailed in the ticket fixed the issue for me.