DS + Flexible Panels

Not sure if this belongs to panels or not but posting here first. Whenever I initially install my site or flush my caches I get the following error:

Notice: Undefined index: items in panels_flexible_panels() (line 257 of C:\Desktop\Sites\drupal_wet\profiles\wetkit\modules\contrib\panels\plugins\layouts\flexible\flexible.inc).
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in panels_flexible_panels() (line 257 of C:\Desktop\Sites\drupal_wet\profiles\wetkit\modules\contrib\panels\plugins\layouts\flexible\flexible.inc).

Tracing the issue to line 384 of ds.registry.inc

if ($layout['name'] != 'flexible') {
  $regions = panels_flexible_panels(array(), array(), $layout);
  $layouts['panels-' . $key] = array(

Which then calls in panels (latest dev) flexible.inc

function panels_flexible_panels($display, $settings, $layout) {
  $items = array();
  panels_flexible_convert_settings($settings, $layout);
  foreach ($settings['items'] as $id => $item) {
    // Remove garbage values.
    if (!isset($item['type'])) {
      unset($items[$id]);
    }
    else if ($item['type'] == 'region') {
      $items[$id] = $item['title'];
    }
  }

  return $items;
}

When I disable DS the error no longer presents itself