XHTML Encoding Issue?

[Russell Seymour <russell.seymour@turtlesystems.co.uk>]

I am using the XHTML output method for transforming my DocBooks, but I think I may have an encoding problem.

I am leaving the system with the default output of UTF-8 but I get the  character and I want to get rid of it.  I can understand some places where it is being done, and that is with empty cells in the table, however it also occurs with other characters such as £.

Does anyone know how to eliminate these characters?

Thanks, Russell