OK so i have fixed this. So probably best I show what i did. It is a Bitnami installation of wordpress so there was an extra step to add it to the htaccess which is explained here:
https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/infrastructure/lamp/administration/use-htaccess/
Then just restart apache and it works
Hi @wfjanet. I have checked the htaccess and it already has this in it. any other suggestions?