Building Content Project on the fly doesn't copy when Item is set to "none"

Question

So I m building a tool that creates a ContentProject on the fly and then Builds it (so that it outputs Xnb's) At the moment the problem is that files that are not to be compiled should be copied into the output directory if marked with CopyToOutputDirectory = 'always' or 'PreserveNewest' . If we were looking at the .contentProj that section for a file that shouldn't be built but should be copied would look like this

<ItemGroup>
 <None Include="MyFile.file">
   <Name>level1</Name>
   <Importer>XmlImporter</Importer>
   <Processor>PassThroughProcessor</Processor>
   <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
 </None>

However, I m building the conntent project on the fly so I need the following code to create the project and add the items

   var projectPath = Path.Combine(buildDirectory, "content.contentproj");
_projectRootElement = ProjectRootElement.Create(projectPath);

        _projectRootElement.AddImport("$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\\Microsoft\\XNA Game Studio\\v4.0\\Microsoft.Xna.GameStudio.ContentPipeline.targets");

        _contentProject = new Project(_projectRootElement);

        _contentProject.SetProperty("XnaPlatform", "Windows");
        _contentProject.SetProperty("XnaProfile", "HiDef");
        _contentProject.SetProperty("XnaFrameworkVersion", "v4.0");
        _contentProject.SetProperty("Configuration", "Debug");
        _contentProject.SetProperty("OutputPath", _outputDirectory);

        // Register any custom importers or processors.
        foreach (string pipelineAssembly in PipelineAssemblies)
        {
            _contentProject.AddItem("Reference", pipelineAssembly);
        }

        // Hook up our custom error logger.
        _errorLogger = new ErrorLogger();
        _buildParameters = new BuildParameters(ProjectCollection.GlobalProjectCollection)
                            {
                                Loggers = new ILogger[] { _errorLogger,  }
                            };
//.... removed code that is not required the following is code that adds each item to the project. In case of items that shoulndt compile I m using None (as in xml from project above)

        var itemType = compile ? "Compile" : "None";

        var items = _contentProject.AddItem(itemType, filename);
        var item = items.SingleOrDefault(x => x.EvaluatedInclude.Equals(filename, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase));

        item.SetMetadataValue("Link", Path.GetFileName(filename));
        item.SetMetadataValue("Name", Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(filename));

        if (!compile)
            item.SetMetadataValue("CopyToOutputDirectory", "Always");

Finally the build code

BuildManager.DefaultBuildManager.BeginBuild(_buildParameters);

        var request = new BuildRequestData(_contentProject.CreateProjectInstance(), new string[0]);

        var submission = BuildManager.DefaultBuildManager.PendBuildRequest(request);

        var execute = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => submission.ExecuteAsync(null, null), cancellationTokenSource.Token);
        var endBuild = execute.ContinueWith(ant => BuildManager.DefaultBuildManager.EndBuild());

        endBuild.Wait();

In BuildRequest the empty array takes parameters that are targets... I ve been going through many different targets that do different things, from building but not really outputing the files to copy dependency dlls into the main folder but not what I need

Cheers