So I have now been looking into this in more detail and have re-installed the system I am now aware that this has to be a permission based issue as I have been playing with the settings whilst reading the logs and also tried installing another script in php and this works without issue.
[sun Sep 17 19:19:31.786671 2017] [cgi:error] [pid 27739] [client IP:1024] AH01215: (13)Permission denied: exec of '/home/user/public_html/index.php' failed: /home/user/public_html/index.php
[sun Sep 17 19:17:49.369686 2017] [cgi:error] [pid 27636] [client IP:1024] AH01215: (13)Permission denied: exec of '/home/user/public_html/index.php' failed: /home/user/public_html/index.php
[sun Sep 17 19:16:44.399634 2017] [cgi:error] [pid 27634] [client IP:1024] AH01215: (13)Permission denied: exec of '/home/user/public_html/index.php' failed: /home/user/public_html/index.php
[sun Sep 17 19:16:19.557679 2017] [cgi:error] [pid 27638] [client IP:1024] AH01215: (13)Permission denied: exec of '/home/user/public_html/index.php' failed: /home/user/public_html/index.php
[sun Sep 17 19:15:38.269483 2017] [cgi:error] [pid 27635] [client IP:1024] AH01215: (13)Permission denied: exec of '/home/user/public_html/index.php' failed: /home/user/public_html/index.php
Current setting are:-
Files 755
scripts 644
templates_c, downloads, and attachments 777