The solution is simply to enable it via the terminal. Link to tutorial in coments

To get my touchpad to work in the first place I set kernel parameters as

i8042.nopnp=1 pci=nocrs

It worked for a day but then while I was using it suddenly stopped. It works while I type the password but stops after the taskbar has finished loading.

The touchpad is recognised in xinput and the control center shows touchpad setings.

⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ HID 1bcf:08a0 Mouse id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ HID 1bcf:08a0 Keyboard id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Elan Touchpad id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ HID 1bcf:08a0 id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated C id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Ideapad extra buttons id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ HID 1bcf:08a0 Keyboard id=16 [slave keyboard (3)]