Having issues with permissions

Hi, We have started work this morning to find the following errors on the Edit System Mail Preferences screen in WHM, (XID w6qvqc) The system failed to open the file "/var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanel/.forward" for reading because of an error: Permission denied at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/LoadFile.pm line 81. Cpanel::LoadFile::_open_if_exists("/var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanel/.forward") called at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/LoadFile.pm line 70 Cpanel::LoadFile::_open("/var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanel/.forward") called at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/LoadFile.pm line 118 Cpanel::LoadFile::_load_r(CODE(0x18166d0), "/var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanel/.forward") called at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/LoadFile.pm line 100 Cpanel::LoadFile::load("/var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanel/.forward") called at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/EmailFunctions.pm line 77 Cpanel::EmailFunctions::getemailaddressfromfile("/var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanel/.forward") called at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/Email/UserForward.pm line 126 Cpanel::Email::UserForward::_get_aliases_from_dotforward("cpanel") called at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/Email/UserForward.pm line 57 Cpanel::Email::UserForward::get_user_email_forward_destination("user", "cpanel") called at whostmgr/bin/whostmgr.pl line 4852 main::rootmail(__CPANEL_HIDDEN__) called at /usr/local/cpanel/Whostmgr/Dispatch.pm line 273 Whostmgr::Dispatch::_do_call(__CPANEL_HIDDEN__, HASH(0x3a90800), HASH(0x3a945a8)) called at /usr/local/cpanel/Whostmgr/Dispatch.pm line 171 Whostmgr::Dispatch::dispatch(__CPANEL_HIDDEN__, 1, ARRAY(0x3a94d28), HASH(0x3a945a8)) called at whostmgr/bin/whostmgr.pl line 439 I am presuming this is a permissions issue - but i'm not sure about the best way to go around resolving it. If anyone has any ideas i'd be greatly appreciative.