The float:left is within a css class of a span nested within 2 other div's.
There is a second (toolbox) div, that sits next to the span, that also has a float:left within it's styling that only appears when the field is in focus.
So yes there are wrapping divs around the control where additional styling could be added if I could work out how to fix it and adding more div elements wouldn't be a problem.
The issue is that I do need to use float:left as without that attribute, the height attribute within the span is overridden and that causes a different set of issues.
It wouldn't be so bad but I've been playing with CSS for over 20 years and it's still (as in this example) an annoying pain at times.