w3 total cache minification issue

Firstly apologies if this problem has been covered here before ( with a solution ). I have searched through the forum so far and not found a solution.

Over the weekend a client’s website’s css dropped out ,wasn’t loading. We figured it was the w3 total cache plugin not generating the minified css , the plugin was disabled and the website started loading up all styled up OK

The weird thing is nothing had changed a few days prior before the plugin minification failed, no new plugins added, no new code, etc. What’s stranger for me is that the development copy that runs on my local work machine is also having the same issue. No automatic updates that I can see, nothing I can see at this stage that could have caused a change to both copies of the site.

The error reported by the plugin is –

Minify URL rewriting is not working. Please verify that the server configuration allows .htaccess

Have tried regenerating the .htaccess file but that hasn’t helped.

Little unsure what could have happened, hoping this is something simple/obvious I have missed.

Thanks