I found a suggestion how to do this in xml but as it does not work and I can only find ways to do it by changing core/local code, I'm posting here to see if anyone can shed some light on it.
this is the suggestion I found:
<reference name="catalog.leftnav">
<action method="unsetChild"><alias>category_filter</alias></action>
</reference>
I added this to the catalog_category_default and _layered handles but with no result. On checking the core code it seemed the correct name for the alias should be layer_filter_category and so I changed to that on both handles but that didn't work either.
More as a desperation I also tried nesting reference in another reference to make sure it was loaded but I'm really unsure if this is correct at all?
<reference name="left">
<reference name="catalog.leftnav">
<action method="unsetChild"><alias>layer_filter_category</alias></action>
</reference>
</reference>
It would be much appreciated if anyone could let me know the correct way to do this by xml.
Thanks a bunch in advance!