Porting unit tests to rspec part1

I aim to rationalise testing within this app by migrating from `test/unit` and `cucumber` to `rspec` (`rspec` rather than `test/unit` mainly because of personal taste).

This is part 1 of migrating the unit tests to rspec. This will mean an intermediate stage where both unit and rspec tests are being run as part of the build.

/cc @alext