Report Layout - Overflow Due To Matrix

Hi

report is required to show the salary levels of employees within the company sorted by department.
first page shows overall company details
rest of report is to show a chart and a matrix for each department -
initally did this as a top level report and a subreport - the sub-report was put inside a table - the table grouped on department - so each time the department changed, a different sub-report was generated

this worked fine - chart and matrix generated ok - but it was slow as the sub-report was calling the stored proc each time to get the same data

decided to re-do by putting the chart and the matrix into the top-level report table (instead of the sub-report)
this is alot faster (takes < 10% of time)
but
the matrix is causing the pagination to go wrong
the table has three equal size columns in it and is the width of the report (apart from margins)

if i make the matrix the width of one column (same width as it was in the subreport), it overflows when the matrix has > 5 columns

this was not happening in the sub-report

think the problem is that the matrix is expanding, it only expands the width of the column it is in - and so the table still has to draw the other two columns - which it does overflowing onto a new page

does this make sense ??

is there any work around for this ??