php - Apache LAMP permisson issues on Ubuntu server

I have been trawling the internet for a few days now and think I've tried almost everything to get some virtual hosts set up on my Ubuntu server but everything short of chmod 777 on the webroot fails.

I have my default Apache conf pointing at /home/server/public_html with the the settings show below

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /home/server/public_html/
    
            Options FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
    
    
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

            AllowOverride All
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all
    

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
    
            AllowOverride None
            Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
            Order allow,deny

            Allow from all
    

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined


Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"

    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from all

I have then created a virtual host for a project I'm working on say for example project.name.co.uk.conf and inside there I have the following

    ServerName http://www.local.dirty-briefs.co.uk
    ServerAlias local.project-name.co.uk
    DocumentRoot /home/server/public_html/project-name/
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

I then ran sudo a2ensite project.name.co.uk.conf.
I'm working on a windows 7 machine using samba to access the files on the server. I added the project.name.co.uk to my windows hosts file however not matter what I do I get 403 permission errors.

Thought id add the tail of the Apache error log in case it was useful

*==> /var/log/apache2/error.log <==
[Sat Jun 11 13:22:23 2011] [error] [client 192.168.0.3] PHP Warning:          require(/home/server/public_html/dirty-briefs/site/protected/config/main.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/server/public_html/dirty-briefs/framework/base/CApplication.php on line 120
[Sat Jun 11 13:22:23 2011] [error] [client 192.168.0.3] PHP Fatal error:  require(): Failed opening required '/home/server/public_html/dirty-briefs/site/protected/config/main.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /home/server/public_html/dirty-briefs/framework/base/CApplication.php on line 120*

It may also be worth mentioning I'm working with Yii the PHP framework I have a .htaccess file that lives in my site folder with the following inside

    # Disable directory browsing
    Options All -Indexes


    # File types
    AddType application/x-font-woff .eot .ttf       # Font-Face


    # URL Rewriting
    
    RewriteEngine On

    # Site Maintenance
    # RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.0\.2\.2

    # RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /maintenance.html [L]


    # LOCAL 
    RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} ^local.project-name.co.uk
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index-local.php/$1
    # -----


    # PRODUCTION
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^project-name.co.uk
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.project-name.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

    RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} ^www.project-name.co.uk
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /folder/index.php/$1
    # -----
    

I tailed the Apache error and access logs and found I was getting perm errors on importing files inside my PHP script due to permission errors.

I have read about checking what user and group Apache is running under, which are www-data www-data so I'm guessing Apache basically doesn't have perms to access the files under /home/server/public_html unless I give the folder 777 perms which I don't want so I'm just wondering if anyone can spot what I'm doing wrong or advise on anything I can try to get this working